


Rain Down and Destroy Me

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Specialise in Dying [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22107103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Klaus dies.The Apocalypse is never that simple.
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Specialise in Dying [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591276
Comments: 597
Kudos: 1425
Collections: Numerous OTPS Infinite Fandoms





	1. set fire this day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This carries off immediately where 'I Don't Want To Fall Away' ends and so I highly recommend reading that first!  
> And if you have, then I hope you enjoy!

There is silence. 

Klaus doesn't want to break it, really, but he can't help himself. He starts crying again. The silence feels almost oppressive, suffocating, after the never-ending Hell that had been the ghosts and their screams. He doesn’t quite know what to do. He feels like he needs to fill it with his own screams or he needs to stay deathly silent and not disrupt it at all.

Slowly, he calms down. He wipes underneath his eyes with the tips of his fingers and exhales slowly. Then, he looks around.

Everything is black and white except for the blood that drips down his shoulders, dripping from his hair.

He stumbles up onto his feet. 

He is in the same place as when he died last time; that long, dirt road, surrounded by grass and trees and a fence to his left. When he looks right, however, the barber shop that Reginald had been in isn’t there anymore; the clearing is covered in trees.

The little girl isn’t there, either; she isn’t on her bike, riding down towards him. She isn’t anywhere to be seen. So, Klaus walks. He follows the road in the direction the little girl had come down the first time, and he keeps walking. The sun warms his face and the only sound is that of his own breathing and his footsteps, the gentle rustle of leaves in a soft breeze. His ears aren’t ringing and his head isn’t pounding in pain, either.

The road goes on for a long time. To his left; fields, endless, stretching out as far as his eyes can see. To his right; trees, thick and dense. He isn’t willing to go off the path and wander through the trees and risk getting lost, so he keeps going forwards.

And, eventually, he stumbles upon something.

The trees begin to thin out ever so slightly and the road splits into two; one narrower path heading to his right. He debates just going on forwards, but he can see a little cottage to his right with smoke curling out of a chimney, and his curiosity is stolen by it. Last time was the barber shop with Reginald; who might be in the cottage this time?

The garden out front is well-kept and cared for, evidently. Flowers burst in vibrant colours against the black and white surroundings. The windows of the cottage are covered in lace drapes; the kind you’d expect your grandmother to have.

Klaus sees a shadow pass one of the other windows. He startles ever so slightly with the confirmation that there is someone in there, waiting for him. Anticipation curls in his guts as he makes his way to the front door. It is slightly ajar, cracked open just so, and he places his hand flat against it and nudges it open.

There is a record player set to one side, crackling away with a song he remembers vividly.

A floorboard creaks to his left.

“Well, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting any visitors today, but I’m not upset.”

Klaus’ breath hitches in his throat. He almost can’t turn and look. Almost.

Dave stands by a sink, holding a cloth in one of his hands. There’s no traces of blood or injury on him anywhere, his lips spread in a wide smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“ _Dave_ ,” he keens, words torn breathlessly from his throat before he rushes forwards. Dave drops the cloth in the sink just in time to open his arms to catch Klaus as he barrels into him. Dave’s arms are warm and solid and real as they close around him, as they hold him tight against his chest, and Klaus almost sobs.

He presses his face into the crook of Dave’s neck and revels in the warmth emanating from him, in the feel of his back beneath his hands, his shoulders, the way one of Dave’s hands settle on the small of his back and the other one clamps down on his opposite shoulder and holds him tightly.

He, very reluctantly, pulls himself back to put just a little space between the two of them. One of his hands move up to cup Dave’s cheek, thumb brushing along his cheek, and yes, he’s still there, still real beneath his touches.

“I – I tried looking for you,” he states. “Earlier, I got sober and I tried to find you but I – it never worked, I’m sorry-“

“Hey, now, none of that,” Dave dismisses. “You’re with me now, right?”

Klaus nods.

“And that’s what matters.” He takes Klaus’ hand and squeezes it gently, and then he tips his head to the side and frowns. With their hands together, he tugs Klaus slightly. “Come on, follow me,” he says, and then he guides Klaus through the cottage and into a bathroom. He has Klaus sit on the toilet while he fumbles around in a cupboard beneath the sink and then he returns with a cloth, damp with warm water.

“I didn’t know you were _here_ , either,” murmurs Klaus.

“Yeah, well, things got a little complicated when I refused to leave for forty-odd years,” Dave replies with a small laugh. Klaus raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Well, I died in nineteen-seventy,” he states, and Klaus nods, swallowing at the reminded. “And you went back to twenty-nineteen. A bit of a time gap, huh? And I had to kick around. It was… weird. I came to terms with things quite quickly and, for myself, there wasn’t a real reason to stick around; but I did. Then one day I find myself here, and that, uh, little girl is annoyed because I won’t move on. So we made a deal; I’d stick around here and stay out of her way.”

Klaus snorts. “Fair enough.”

Dave brushes the cloth up and down his neck, gently searching up into his hair. There’s a long stretch of silence before he speaks up again. “What happened?”

Klaus presses his lips together in a frown. “I, uh. Died.”

“Obviously,” Dave hums. He moves to the sink to rinse off the cloth and Klaus watches blood run down the drain. “Doesn’t look like it was… peaceful.” And Dave looks a little sad at that too, turning on Klaus with a frown and soft eyes. Klaus avoids his gaze by looking down at his hands quickly.

Dave’s fingers catch his jaw, gentle, and coax his head up to look at him once more. “Klaus?”

Klaus frowns, leaning into his touch. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I… kind of shot myself.”

Dave’s face falls and Klaus reaches up to grab his hand, as if afraid that he might turn around and leave at the revelation. Of course, though, he doesn’t. He looks to struggle with his words, with what to say, and so Klaus speaks instead.

“It’s not like – it’s not a _bad_ thing – I’m not, like, going about _wanting_ to die, I just – it was Hell, Dave, I couldn’t stay there. I felt like I was going insane. There were…” He closes his eyes as a shudder runs down his spine. “ _So_ many ghosts. Thousands. More than that, Dave, and they were _all_ screaming all the time. I couldn’t – I couldn’t stay there.”

Dave sighs, gentle, and he cups Klaus’ cheek. “I understand,” he says softly, nodding. “It couldn’t have been easy. I just wish that you didn’t have to do that.”

“I’m here, though,” says Klaus, a smile stealing his features. He reaches a hand up to cover Dave’s. “With you. And it’s quiet and I’m happy.”

Dave gives him a sad smile and nods. “And I’m happy to see you.”

He falls quiet as he cleans the last of the blood from his skin. When he’s done, he coaxes Klaus onto his feet and Klaus surges forwards, hands cupping his face, to press their lips together. Dave doesn’t hesitate to lean into the touch, hands settling onto his hips and tugging him closer, melting any tension that had been lingering in the air.

Klaus curls one hand in his shirt, tugging him flush against his chest, trapping his fist between the two of them. Dave almost stumbled slightly, forcing Klaus to go backwards until his back hits the wall.

When they part, both are breathless. Dave rests his forehead against Klaus’, chest heaving, pressed against his.

“As good as it was forty-odd years ago?” Klaus asks. Dave laughs, brushing his nose against Klaus’.

“Perfect,” he murmurs. Klaus grins, leaning forwards to press one quick kiss to his lips once more before nudging him.

“How about you show me around the place, then?”

Dave nods, hand sliding down his shoulder to find his hand before guiding him away.

The cottage is small – two bedrooms, one bathroom, with an open kitchen and living room. The record player never ceases to play and the whole house has a smell like flowers. There’s the garden out front and one out back, too, with a small table and a few chairs and two bowls on the floor; one of water, one with cat food in it. Klaus raises an eyebrow at Dave and he just smiles.

“There’s a cat that comes by sometimes. She’s been here since I have; real sweet thing. I call her Tilly.”

“Where is she?”

Dave shrugs. “She’ll come around at some point.”

Dave guides him away from the house, down to where the garden melts into fields, and then he sits down and Klaus sits down with him.

And it’s nice. It’s peaceful, and it’s everything he had ever wanted with Dave. Klaus leans into his side but, slowly, Dave slumps until he’s laying down in the grass. Klaus’ head rests on his chest and his heart, here, beats steadily beneath his ear. Dave’s fingers card through his hair in a soothing motion and his head tilts up into it.

Any thoughts of the ghosts, of the Apocalypse and of his family are gone in favour of revelling in this moment. He had tried so hard to find Dave again and now he was here, and it was the best thing he could imagine. Dave wasn’t some wobbling image of a ghost, an ugly bullet wound in the centre of his chest; he looked as he did when he was alive, when they were in ‘Nam together, on leave.

He felt like he could fall asleep there, with grass tickling his arms and Dave’s arms around him. And by the looks of it, Dave felt a similar way; content to run his fingers through his hair slowly and revel in simply being close to him.

“I like coming out here,” Dave murmurs. “It’s peaceful. It’s usually all black and white most days, but sometimes the sunsets have colour. It’s really pretty.”

Klaus hums, but his eyes don’t go up to search the sky. He tips his head up so that he can brush his lips over the underside of Dave’s jaw. For a while, they just revel in being near one another again and Klaus revels in the quietness of the place as well. Eventually, Klaus sits upright and Dave follows him, stretching. A cool breeze ruffles his hair and Klaus is still reeling from the fact that he’s here, right in front of him.

“How about we go inside?” He offers. Klaus hums pleasantly, nodding, and together they stand and retrace their steps back up into the cottage. Klaus notices as they pass that Tilly is sitting by the bowls Dave had left out; a small cat with thick, long ginger fur that stands out. She bumps his leg with her head when he pauses by her, crouching slightly to let her sniff his knuckles before gently scratching the top of her head.

“Christ,” Dave mutters in the doorway, sighing. Klaus looks up, curious, sliding to his side and peering over his shoulder. There, sitting in the living room, is the little girl. Klaus can’t help but deflate a little at the sight of her.

“I was beginning to think you were going to spend all day out there,” she comments. Klaus and Dave shuffle in, sitting together on the couch nearby her.

“I might just go back out there,” Klaus mutters.

“You can’t have expected me not to come and talk to you,” she drawls, raising an eyebrow.

“I can hope.” He waves a hand. “What is it this time?”

“You’re dead.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

The little girl rolls her eyes at him. “And it’s time for you to go back.”

Klaus stares at her. Then he laughs. “Uh, no,” he says. “I don’t think so. I’m dead for good, thanks.”

“Not just now,” she says, shaking her head. “You have to go back.”

“Normal people don’t just come back from the dead; I’m supposed to just stay dead. That’s it.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, you’re a special case,” the girl says. “I’m giving you a chance to prepare yourself and say your goodbyes instead of just dropping you back there.”

Denial changes quickly to panic at her insistence. He shakes his head, looking between her and Dave. “No, you can’t send me back there – you can’t,” he says, fingers curling into the arms of the chair he’s on. “You – please, don’t, you don’t understand what it was like-“

“I’m sorry, Klaus,” she says, standing up. “I really am. But it’s simply what has to happen.”

“No – wait! Can’t you get rid of them? You can make them quiet, or get rid of them, you can-“

“Five minutes,” she says, and she does look a little apologetic, at the very least. Then she steps outside, leaving Klaus in the cottage with Dave, reeling. He slumps back on the couch, jaw slack, watching the front door.

“Klaus?”

Dave shifts up to his side, resting a hand on his thigh. Klaus startles slightly, wide eyes turning on Dave. He’s torn between the fear of losing Dave and the fear of going back into that Hell with the ghosts.

“I don’t want to go back,” he says, whispers it. “I – I can’t go back there. I want to stay here, with you.”

Dave’s hand rests on top of Klaus’ and Klaus is quick to interlock their fingers, all but clinging to him. “I don’t want you to leave either,” Dave murmurs, voice soft, and Klaus can’t help but keep looking between Dave and the front door as if expecting the girl to storm back in and throw him into the Apocalypse. “But it doesn’t look like you have a choice.”

“I know,” he mutters, squeezing Dave’s hand harder. This feels worse than dying. It feels like Dave is dying again, being torn away from him again. He’d rather stay here for eternity than live in that place again. The possible grief he’s putting his siblings through doesn’t even cross his mind.

Dave moves one hand to cup Klaus’ cheek and Klaus only then realises that he’s crying, shaking. “But you’re strong, Klaus. Stronger than you think you are, and your family is there, right? Ask them for help. I know that you can find a way through it, Klaus, and you know I’ll wait here forever for you.”

Klaus deflates, eyes slipping briefly closed. “I don’t want to,” he murmurs shakily, sniffling. “I love you so much.”

Dave gives him a sad smile, thumb running across his cheek. “I love you too, Klaus,” he tells him. “And I’ll be here, waiting for you when it’s time. Just remember I’m here for you and I love you.”

Klaus can’t help but let out a choked sob. He slumps forwards, wrapping his arms around Dave tightly. Dave returns the embrace just as firmly, one hand resting on the back of his neck, his fingers gently playing with the hairs at the nape of his neck. Klaus commits the feeling to memory. He lets Dave hold him until the front door creaks open and the little girl clears his throat.

“Please,” he says, voice hoarse. “Don’t make me go back.”

The little girl offers him a tense kind of smile. “I’m sorry, Klaus. I have to.”

Dave squeezes his hand. Everything just seems to get a little more distant with each step she takes closer, and then she lays a hand on his shoulder.

His head bursts into pain. His legs are sprawled out awkwardly and he gasps for breath. It takes him a moment to process that he can see, and what he sees is a silent crowd of corpses all around him.

###

Diego can’t let go of him.

He cradles Klaus’ body to his chest, holds his head against his shoulder and keeps rocking back and forth.

He’s too still. Too limp, too quiet, too peaceful.

Diego hates the way he’s limp in his arms. If he were to loosen his grip, Klaus would just fall to the ground in a boneless heap. He doesn’t support his own head and his legs are stretched out awkwardly, uncomfortably. One of his arms are trapped between their chests, the other stretches out by his side, elbow locked.

He had thought that he had been sleeping relatively peacefully only ten minutes ago.

He had heard rubble move. Had heard Klaus get up. Had watched Klaus try to bash his head off the floor, again and again and again, and he had just assumed he could deal with it.

All he had had to do was turn around. He only had to turn around.

Five, after several long minutes of dazed silence, shuffles closer and takes Klaus’ outstretched hand. His eyes are cold, jaw locked, and he can’t bring himself to look away from Klaus – he almost looks pained when Diego holds Klaus’ head in the crook of his neck, hiding it from Five’s view.

“We fucking knew he was struggling,” Five mutters. “We fucking sat and watched him and did nothing.”

“We…” Luther’s voice is rough and he has to clear his throat before he can continue talking. “We didn’t know how to help him – didn’t know what was wrong.”

“We should have fucking asked,” Five snaps. “It’s not that fucking hard.”

Diego ignores them both.

He’d had scares of losing Klaus before – they all had. Seeing him in the hospital after overdoses, seeing him on the streets with painful bruises and chest-deep coughs, pale skin and sunken cheeks. They’d all had days where they feared that Klaus was going to get himself into a situation that he couldn’t get himself out of; that he would take things too far one day and not be able to take it back. But he’d always seemed to miraculously bounce back or dance just out of reach of death.

This had just never been a possibility, however. Klaus was supposed to be spitting annoying, immature jokes and always negotiating peace between them all or antagonising them just for a reaction. Not haunted and scared and bloody, growing cold in Diego’s arms.

“D-damnit, Klaus,” he mutters, lifting his head just enough to look back down at his face. He doesn’t even look peaceful. Eyes wide open, glossy, scared, lined with dark circles. Diego supports his head while reaching out with one hand to close his eyes. “God damnit, I’m s-sorry.”

“What do we do?” Vanya asks, voice wobbling with tears. At least, Diego thinks, she doesn’t sound like she’s about to pass out from hyperventilating anymore.

Diego ignores her. He doesn’t really care.

He just had to turn around. How many times had he failed Klaus? How many times had Klaus clearly been in distress and needed help and Diego had failed him? And he couldn’t have been any clearer that he needed help than the past couple days.

His hands are soaked with blood.

Luther comes closer, then, kneeling down beside Five and slumping in defeat. He lifts a hand, hesitates, then drops it.

“We need to bury him,” he murmurs. “He – he needs a grave.”

Five looks pale even in the firelight. “I can’t,” he whispers, his eyes distant. “I can’t bury him again.”

“I was right there,” Diego mutters to no one in particular. “I heard him.” Is Ben around? Does Ben feel as helpless as he does? But Ben is dead; he couldn’t stop Klaus. Diego could have.

Everyone is too in their own heads to acknowledge Diego’s murmuring; too stuck in their own shock and grief.

Diego’s eyes screw shut as another wave of grief rolls through him, painful. His shoulders shake with a supressed sob and his grip on Klaus tightens, holding him protectively to him – but it’s too late.

“We should move him, Diego,” says Luther, lifting his head to look at him. He looks sad, eyes wide and watery, voice tense as he struggles to remain in control.

Diego lifts his head up to glare at him. “He’s d-dead, Luther,” he hisses, though it comes without much venom. “Do you not care? He’s _dead_ -“

“I _know_ ,” Luther snaps defensively, eyes falling. Then, a little weaker. “I know, Diego.”

Silence stretches out amongst them all. Diego keeps his grip tight on Klaus and Allison falls next to Luther, wiping her tears.

Diego doesn’t think he can let go, but at the same time he wants to drop him in horror; wants to get rid of the feeling of Klaus’ dead weight in his arms, the blood on his hands, the utter ragdoll-ness of his body.

Instead, he just holds on tighter.

And then something strange happens.

Klaus gasps. His body twitches, arching, and he gasps, eyes blowing wide open. Everyone jumps out of their skin – Five lets go of Klaus and falls backwards – and Diego almost shoves him off his lap. Klaus keeps gasping for air as if he’s been held underwater for too long, spluttering, and his eyes bounce wildly around the place before he slumps, still in Diego’s arms, and moans sadly.

Diego stares down at Klaus, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, hands still wet with his blood, and he can’t quite comprehend what just happened.

But he’s alive and shaking, not quite realising where he is, failing to tug his hand free from Five’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments; I greatly appreciate seeing all your feedback and I hope you liked this part!


	2. make me look away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

“W-what the fuck, Klaus?”

Klaus’ eyes roll away from the nearest ghost and to Diego. It’s only then that he realises that he’s awkwardly held in Diego’s arms, that one of his hands are in Five’s. All of his other siblings are nearby, all teary-eyed, shocked, and a little horrified, Klaus thinks.

His head hurts. At least his ears aren’t ringing anymore, however.

He’s alive.

The ghosts are all around him.

They’re silent for the moment, but Klaus’ guts already twist in dread for the moment they begin to cry and scream. Their eyes bore heavily into Klaus, furious, murderous, and Klaus moans. He doesn’t want to be here. He can still feel Dave’s hand on him, still hear his voice echoing in his ears, and he wants to go back there.

“Klaus – Klaus, what the fuck?”

“How are you? What?”

“Oh my god-“

He peels his eyes open, unaware they had fallen closed again. Diego’s thumb runs over his cheek and his breath stutters in his throat. Klaus doesn’t feel as worried or guilty as he thinks he ought to.

“I don’t want to be here,” he breathes, eying the ghosts around him. Ben drifts to his side, wide-eyed and reaching for his shoulder only for his hand to fall through. He stays silent, though. He knows why Klaus did it; why he doesn’t want to be here. He hasn’t got any questions.

“You’re – you’re alive,” Five stammers. Diego’s grip tightens, bruising, pulling him even closer to his chest.

“You s-shot yourself,” Diego says. Klaus closes his eyes. His head feels wet. “ _Why_ , Klaus? Why did you do that?”

Klaus deflates. His eyes water and when will they start screaming again? How long does he have left? How long does he have to stay here for? _How many bullets are in that gun_? He swallows, wets his lips, and exhales shakily.

“Ghosts,” he whispers, as if saying it too loud might bring their attention reigning down on him like a hailstorm, might trigger them into trying to scream him into a coma.

“ _Ghosts_?” Echoes Luther, incredulous. “You – you _shot yourself_ because of some ghosts?”

Klaus laughs. It comes out shaking, hurt, and he takes his hand that isn’t in Five’s grip, because Five either doesn’t realise he’s still holding his hand or is just refusing to let go, and presses it over his eyes.

“You always see ghosts, Klaus, I don’t – why would you kill yourself?” Luther asks him and Klaus drops his hand, staring up at the dark sky overhead. It’s pitch black at nights, he notices, no moon in the sky, and the ghosts seem to morph out of the shadows, form themselves out of black void.

He smiles sadly. Is Dave able to see him? Can Dave see the sea of ghosts around him, shifting, wobbling, dripping blood all over the place? He must be able to hear them.

He turns to Five. “How many bullets do we have?” He asks, quiet. Five doesn’t respond, simply staring wide-eyed at him, pale. His hand twitches in his and Klaus feels a little bad for asking it. He supposes, though, that he doesn’t need a gun to kill himself, so the answer isn’t that important to him.

“ _Klaus_ ,” Luther insists as Klaus begins to pull himself out of Diego’s lax grip, free from Five’s hand. Sitting on the floor, he cranes his head to look up at Luther. Had it been any other situation, he probably would have hit back with an insult or snarky response, but now he just feels heavy, full of dread, mourning his brief respite in silence with Dave. He doesn’t have the energy to conjure up some typical insult.

Instead, he just smiles and closes his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he murmurs.

“Understand what, Klaus?” Diego asks, and his hands are covered in blood. His own blood, Klaus realises.

“You can’t just – just shoot yourself and come back – you _came_ _back_ , Klaus – and pretend nothing happened!” Luther exclaims. Klaus opens his eyes to look at him. At least he’s tall enough that he can’t see the ghosts over his shoulders, not while he is sitting down and Luther is standing up, towering over him. Klaus wishes he’d stay there.

When Luther opens his mouth to respond, Diego reaches out to place his hand on Klaus’ arm. His eyes and the tears in them reflect the burning fire. His lips move silently around sounds for a moment, uncertain, before settling on; “please.”

“Tell them, Klaus,” murmurs Ben, kneeling by his side. “Talk to them. Please.”

He wishes he could touch Ben. He could probably try and manifest him but the stunt in the theatre was sudden, something he didn’t even know he could do, and he doesn’t want to try again. Not now, not here, not with the other ghosts around him, waiting for any opportunity they might get.

“The drugs were never for fun,” Klaus mutters. “The drugs got rid of them all – except for Ben.” He shrugs, briefly glancing at his brother. “They’re – they’re not like Ben. It’s like-“ He presses his hands against his temple, inhaling slowly. The silence, now, is too heavy, pressing in on him as his siblings come closer to listen to his justification.

“They’re rotting, mangled corpses, and they all just beg and cry and yell and scream _all_ the time. There’s children. Some don’t know they’re dead. They hate me.” His lips twitch bitterly and he laughs, quiet. “Oh, they hate me. They make sure I know that. And now…” He sighs, looking around, forcing himself to take them all in. All crowded around him, shoulder to shoulder, in doorways and windows and in the streets, bloody and burnt and wheezing past the blood in their throats. “Now, there’s so many of them. I’ve… there’s so many.”

He stops talking to focus on breathing, trying not to panic, but it’s true – there is just so many of them, and he can’t handle it. He can’t handle the screaming, or the sobbing children, or the furious parents – he just can’t. And by the time the sun is setting again, they’ll be screaming already.

“How many?” Five asks, voice quiet, eyebrows drawn together. Klaus tries to laugh but a choked sob comes out instead. He clamps one hand over his mouth, shaking his head before looking around again.

He thinks about the streets, and the ones on the second floor of the building opposite them, and then ones in the alleyways, and on the third floor, and are they in basements too? Are they just simply everywhere?

“Too many,” he says. “They just – they don’t stop. They’re everywhere, and they’ll start screaming, and you don’t understand – it was so peaceful. I don’t want to be here.” He closes his eyes as if that might help him at all. He knows it won’t.

“I – I don’t understand, Klaus,” Vanya murmurs, looking sad and pale, her hands shaking over her chest. Klaus laughs a little once more.

“I know,” he mutters. “Imagine your concerts, Vanya. And imagine that the crowd just never ends. They’re everywhere. You can’t see the end of them. Row after row after row, all crowding around you. Imagine that they’re all corpses. And they’re all… screaming.” A shudder runs down his spine and his hands run through his hair, head ducking down. “Not now. But they’ll start, and it’s too much.”

His siblings don’t respond. They stare at him in various states of confusion and shock and Klaus already feels uncomfortable talking about the ghosts – there’s a reason he never told them about the ghosts before now – and he doubts it will do anything, either. They have never understood and they never will, and he isn’t sure he really cares about them understanding either. There’s nothing they can do. There is no dealer to turn to here.

“Just… forget about it. We need to focus on getting out, and Vanya, and all that stuff.”

He tries to avoid the heavy gazes of his siblings. He’s back (for now) and what is there to be done about it? Confronted by the face of his siblings’ guilt, he does feel a little bad now – but would he take it back if it meant what is to come? Take his own peace and leave his siblings in pain?

Klaus tries not to think about the answer.

“How did you come back?” Five asks, sounding a little breathless. “You were dead. How could you come back?”

“I – it happens. God doesn’t like me very much,” he snorts sadly. "It's just a thing. Don't worry about it."

Incredulous expressions greet him when he dares to look up and so he quickly looks away again. 

Silence falls over them, tense and heavy and suffocating. Klaus stands up. "Look, we haven't got time for this. I'm back. I'm sorry. I'm fine, now. We have stuff to do."

### 

The morning comes painfully slowly. They force the subject of Klaus' death from their minds, though not entirely, but what are they supposed to do? There's nothing they can do other than ignore the blood staining the rubble, staining Diego's hands and clothes, still covering Klaus. 

Looks are constantly thrown his way, as if his siblings expect him to reach for the gun at any second (Five keeps it with him, never further than arms reach) or to burst into hysterics. Klaus finds it easy to ignore him; he has thousands of other people staring at him, too. He hardly notices his siblings.

They set out to try and find water. Five comes with them this time, muttering as they go about resources and dirt. There's little actual water around and so Five gathers the majority, leaving Klaus and Diego to wash their skin of his blood with the small remnants. They find clothes in an old store that hasn't entirely burnt down and they swap out the bloody ones. Klaus feels bad for inconveniencing them all like he has. 

They find a little more food, returning to their camp with a few cans in each of their hands. Diego and Five's eyes burn into him when he trips his way around a ghosts' hand reaching out for his ankle. 

They're acting faster than before. He'd had longer before they began to move in on them. The sign of them becoming more active spikes fear into him and oh god he thought he could do it, he really thought he could deal with it, but they're already reaching out for him and the guilt from his suicide is suddenly gone. 

Klaus falls onto the floor in the camp after dropping his share of food and looks at the feet surrounding him a few paces away.

"Klaus?"

His head lifts, eyes seeking out Vanya. "Are... are you okay?"

Klaus glances around him. A drop of blood falls from one ghosts' lips and splatters onto his thigh. He blinks and it's gone. 

"I'm fine."

Eyes scrutinize him, but it's nothing new. 

"How is it, Five?" Asks Luther. Five, who had immediately returned to his equations, grunts.

"Give me time," he says, stressed. "I just need more time."

No one responds to him. Diego, clad in a new black hoodie with dust on it, a few sizes too big, opens a can of food and heats it on the fire. There's more supplies to keep the fire going. Luther probably got it.

Ben sits beside Klaus. Klaus chews anxiously on his thumbnail. 

Allison wanders over. He doesn't know how much time has passed. She holds out a can of spaghetti rings. Klaus isn't sure he can keep them down, isn't sure there's really much point in eating, but he reaches out and takes it anyway, murmuring a gentle _thank you._

He eats mechanically. He doesn't notice his siblings moving about camp until they come close enough to make the ghosts in the first line, closest to Klaus, go blue and transparent with one of his siblings' body parts sticking through them.

At some point, Diego sits down. Stones skitter across the ground, disrupted by his boots, and the few inches between them feels like a mile.

"How are you?" He asks, voice dropping low. Klaus swallows.

"I won't do it again," he murmurs. It's not really a lie, but not the truth either. He doesn't know if he'll do it again or not. He doubts he'd be able to get his hands on Five's gun again, so if he is to do it again, it'll be painful. Slower. He isn't sure he cares. 

"Good," says Diego, looking away. "Good. But how are you?"

Klaus' eyes flick, briefly, up and then back down to the ground. "Fine. They're still quiet. I'm fine."

Diego swallows. "Is there _anything_ we can do?"

Klaus presses his lips together. He shakes his head. "Drugs block them out," he mutters, almost hopefully. But where could they possibly find a perfectly safe, surviving stash of anything here? 

Diego frowns, apologetic. 

A scream cracks like a gunshot through the air. Klaus jumps, eyes snapping up. Diego stares at him. He can't see who is screaming, but none of his siblings besides Ben look up or around. His eyes slide closed in defeat, head dropping slightly. 

Diego rests a hand on Klaus' knee. He did go for his wrist, but his hands moved out of the way on their way to his ears. 

### 

The way the sound moves around him is disorienting. A group will scream to his left and then, when they quiet to sobs, a group behind him will scream, then above him, then in front of him. When he dares to crack open his eyes, he's surprised to see them in the same spot.

Diego tries talking to him. He even raises his voice a little and when it's just periodic sobbing rather than the screams, he clings onto the words as if he's never heard Diego talk about the police academy before, as if he actually cares. 

True to his thoughts from earlier, though, by the time the sun goes down, the screaming has started again. 

###

He doesn't feel guilty. If anything, he feels angry. Why is he not allowed peace? Why couldn't he stay there? Why did he have to come back? Why are his siblings so cruel as to look at him, doubled over with his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut, and move the gun away? In what world is this fair? 

Klaus grins his teeth together and flinches away from an incoherent yell right by his ear. "Shut up," he growls, muttered beneath his breath and forced through his teeth, "shut up, shut up, shut up!"

He can't even hear his own voice. It seems to edge them on, makes them all get even louder, and Klaus groans as if in pain, digging his nails into the skin behind his ears. His head ducks further between his knees and he lets out a sharp yell, as if trying to counter the ghosts, as if trying to hear himself through it all. It doesn't work. 

"Fuck!" He yells, or he thinks he does because he can't hear it. " _Shut up_!"

Hands land on his wrists and he jumps, sitting upright and tearing his hands away, holding them to his chest.

Diego is there. Eyes sad and fearful and concerned.

Klaus forgot that he is there; that the others are there, too. He probably looks insane. He can't find it in himself to care.

Diego's lips move, words swallowed by the sobs of a ghost, of many ghosts, and Klaus just closes his eyes and puts his hands over his ears once more. It doesn't work. 

But he bites his lips, stops shouting - he isn't sure why he did in the first place, it's not as if it would make them stop, he was stupid to think so - and presses his head into his knees. 

He glances up once. Through shuffling legs, the firelight bounces off the barrel of the gun.

Then someone - a ghost, a sibling, he doesn't know - steps in front of it, hiding it from his sight, and Klaus swallows down a yell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things aren't going too well for Klaus :( but I hope you enjoyed the part! Thank you all for your support and feedback, it means a lot to me!


	3. strike me down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the wait, but enjoy!

He is so tired.

The exhaustion he feels weighs down in his bones, thick in his skull like a swamp. He feels dizzy with it. The idea of sleep seems so perfect, so Heavenly, and yet it always manages to evade him; strays just beyond his fingertips and out of his grasp. Despite how exhausted he might be, he can never reach it.

Whenever it gets close, whenever his body begins to loosen and his vision begins to grow dark, a splatter of blood explodes inches from his face and there is a skeletal hand slamming onto the ground with enough force he thinks their wrist might break, and chapped lips part over his ears to scream agony into his mind. The sudden threat makes adrenaline burst through his veins and he scrambles backwards from it, crawling through other ghosts to slam his back against a crumbling wall as if it might help him in any way, and sleep is long forgotten, lost to horror and fear, to scrambling to find a way to ease or quieten the screams that echo all around him.

Of course, there is no way to do this. Nothing makes them quiet, nothing makes them stop, nothing makes them go away. If they would even listen to him in the first place, there would be no point because his voice is drowned out beneath the tidal wave of their voices. It doesn’t stop him from trying though.

With his hands clamped like vices over his ears, his forehead stinging from the stones that dig into it as he presses it into the ground, a chorus of useless pleas tumble from his lips.

“Please, please, _please_ , stop, just stop. I’m so tired, please, please. I’m sorry, please-“ He sucks in a deep breath, one that struggles to make its way down his throat and into his lungs. He’s been struggling to breathe for a while now. The breathlessness is a familiarity.

_“Where is my baby? Where is my baby girl? She hates fire-“_

_“I saw it coming, I was outside, I tried to run and it was too late-“_

_“It still hurts, why does it still hurt? It hurts so much-“_

“I know,” Klaus says in response to the few sentences he can pick out. “I know, I know, I know-“ his nails scratch the skin behind his ears, dig in and pull, as if he might be able to tear his ears straight off and be freed of the hellish screams, the sobbing, the pleading.

He almost can’t believe he hasn’t gone deaf yet. His ears are ringing, he knows. His brain rattles in his skull. He doesn’t think it would be so unpleasant.

He’s so tired.

He can’t be sure if it’s day or night, doesn’t know how long he’s been awake for.

It takes him several moments, but he realises, delayed, that someone’s hand is on his cheek. Gentle but firm, trying to tug his head upwards, away from the ground. But with his head tilted down, pressed into the dust and the rubble, he has no risk of catching a brief glimpse of the ghosts if he accidentally opens his eyes. He tries to convey this to the person holding his head by shaking it, trying to dislodge the grip.

“No, no, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to,” he rambles, pushes his head down with even more force. But the hands are stronger, tug his head off the floor for a few seconds and then let him lean back down. His head doesn’t meet stone or dust again, but instead something soft, comfortable; someone’s lap.

A hand comes down to rest over one of his covering one of his ears, tries to tug it aside, but he clamps down with an unrelenting ferocity. He knows whether or not he covers his ears doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change a single thing, doesn’t muffle them at all.

He feels breath warm on his cheek, on his hand. “Klaus, can you look at me?”

_“Look at me, Klaus!”_

_“Open your eyes, open them, look at me!”_

_“Klaus!”_

“No, no, no, I don’t want to.”

The hand settles on his, relaxed or maybe defeated; it stops trying to move him, at least. He isn’t sure who it is; struggles, for a moment, to remember who it might be.

“That’s alright,” the person murmurs, maybe. “That’s fine.”

The hand moves to his head, runs through the greasy mess of his tangled hair. It’s comforting, soothing, a bit. He wishes the feeling could wash everything else away, wishes it was strong and prominent enough to entirely distract him from the screaming around him, that he could lose himself in the comforting motion. It isn’t enough to do that, but he appreciates it nonetheless.

The hand goes through his hair, back and forth like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth, from his forehead to the base of his neck. It is warm and heavy and fingertips tickle his scalp, run through the roots of his hair.

And the ghosts keep screaming.

They keep screaming.

###

Someone nudges him. A hand on the back of his shoulder, gentle, then firmer. Tugging, pulling him. The hand changes to someone else’s, larger and stronger, and pulls him upright off the floor much easier than the previous person. He lets them.

He leans back against a wall. It’s fine, as long as he can keep his eyes closed, keep his hands over his ears. But then someone tugs his hand and he shakes his head quickly, tries to get them to leave him alone.

“Klaus,” says a voice that he assumes belongs to a person that is alive because it isn’t a scream or a sob that is half-choked on thick blood. “Klaus, you need to drink, you need to try to eat something,” they say.

The words take several moments to process in the thick swamp of his mind. Drink and eat. He needs to drink and eat. He can’t remember the last time he did either of those things; his sense of time is horrifically screwed up, a never-ending scale of screaming that turns to sobbing that turns to screaming.

Klaus’ hands shake. He doubts he would be able to hold a bottle of water or anything, and plus, that would require moving his hands from his ears and he isn’t willing to do that.

They keep screaming. Klaus forgets what he had been thinking about, about the drinking and eating, turning his attention once more to the screams.

They can’t all be screaming all the time, right? Not that it’d matter if some of them ever stopped. All of the ghosts in a one mile radius to himself could be silent and the screams would, no doubt, be deafening still.

But they have to stop somewhere. They can’t go on forever. They have to stop. Right?

Before he can consider that train of thought, there is water slipping between his lips, flooding his mouth, spilling down his throat. He jerks back, eyes snapping open, choking and spluttering. The hands on him are suddenly gone, no longer holding his face in place, and he splutters and chokes, coughing and doubling over. Water dribbles past his lips and down his chin, splatters across the ground beneath him in an eerily similar fashion to the blood that is coughed up by many of the ghosts. If he watches it for too long, he can almost see it begin to turn red and thick.

“Klaus? Klaus, are you okay?”

“Breathe, you’re alright, breathe-“

_“I couldn’t breathe, my entire house came down-“_

_“Mom? Mom? I’m scared-“_

Klaus swallowed, gasped, and continued to splutter his airways free. His eyes, now open, bounced rapidly around the place. Despite himself and the determination he had had to keep them closed, he finds himself unable to close them again now. He doesn’t know what he had expected. For them to lessen? To spread out? Step back? For there to be less than he had actually thought?

It doesn’t matter what he thought, because it was wrong. They are still unending. Still tumbling over one another, over themselves, in their haste to get to him. They thrust themselves through his siblings, fall through one another or twitch mindlessly on the ground, stuck reliving their dying moments and watching things that aren’t there. They peer over the edge of crumbling second and third floors, clamber through broken windows, fill up doorways. They all reach for him with blood-slick bones.

Klaus moans. Struggling to get his breathing back under control after the water that had seemed intent on drowning him, he twists himself slightly, attempting to push himself into the wall behind himself as if he might be able to melt into it.

His shoulder throbs from how hard he pushes himself into the wall and there is blood everywhere and bones and burns and screaming and concerned eyes and silent mouths saying words that are drowned out in the incoherent screaming everywhere and he’s so _tired_.

Tangling his fingers in his hair, he drops his head low between his knees and screws his eyes shut. His teeth grind together and his body twitches with each shiver that seizes his body and indicates a mangled hand falling through him and what if his powers were to act up, now? Would they go mad like starved, stray dogs and tear him piece to piece? Choke him on their blood and dig their fingers into his throat, search for his veins and tug on them like guitar strings-

Someone touches him and he flinches away hard enough that his head whacks off the wall behind him with a vicious crack that goes unheard of by himself.

At least the hands don’t touch him again.

###

Diego eyes the can in his hands. His appetite is little despite the work he’s done and the little food he already has had. Nothing looks appetising and he can’t imagine it settling pleasantly in his stomach, either.

When he looks around at his other siblings too he sees them in a rather similar situation. Allison is picking infrequently at her food; a similar can of ravioli. Vanya hasn’t touched hers in a while. Five’s hasn’t been touched since it was opened and sat beside him. Only Luther’s ration was empty because he metabolised things rapidly and probably felt more starving than the rest of them.

Attempting to get Klaus to eat had gone just about as well as expected, which is to say not well at all. Diego just hopes that he had swallowed some of the water he had choked on; it would be better than nothing, at least.

Diego spares him another glance. Other than the frequent jerking and twitching and trembling of his body, he had remained still in the same place crushed against the crumbling back wall of the Academy. He was muttering, but he had hardly ever stopped muttering once he stopped being coherent. Diego tries not to listen in to what he is saying; it typically is the same thing repeated constantly, and it just makes Diego’s guts twist.

At least he hasn’t started hitting his head, purposefully, again.

Scrubbing a hand down his face, a sigh tumbles past his lips and he sets down the can of ravioli on the floor by his feet. He turns his attention to the fire still crackling in the middle of their makeshift camp and then shuffles closer to it.

The days here are sweltering hot and at night the temperature drops dramatically. Beyond the light of the fire, he can’t see anything else; utterly pitch black everywhere. It’s unsettling, to let his eyes flicker out a few feet and to see thick shadows and then complete nothingness, as if the world simply ends beyond the rubble of the Academy they are in. It might as well, Diego thinks.

Five is standing still and staring at the wall in front of himself. Diego feels the urge to ask what he’s trying to calculate now but finds the words never form properly on his tongue let alone leave his lips. He isn’t sure if these are the calculations to return them home or if they are calculations about the Commission, perhaps.

Diego hopes it is the former, though he knows Five is just about running himself thin trying to perfect those calculations and also help Vanya.

This situation had been an opportunity at first. They have little chance of the Commission coming after them in this time line and they have no chance of hurting anyone else or of being disturbed. They can practice Vanya’s powers in peace and secure in the knowledge that no one will get hurt if anything was to go wrong.

But then there’s Klaus. His brother’s situation had been so sudden and no one could have expected anything like it to happen. Had Klaus once sat them down or at least spoke to one of them once and hinted about the gravity of his powers, perhaps they could have dealt with it better. Found a way to help before it got so bad he felt the only thing he could do was kill himself. But he doesn’t think that Klaus has ever told them about the ghosts, ever hinted they were all that bad, let alone this bad, at least in a time where they were old enough that anyone would remember it.

Would it have helped? Even now, Diego doesn’t think he really even understands the severity. It’s hard to when they can’t see it. But they can see how it affects Klaus. How frighteningly quickly it can tear him down completely.

“What’s the plan?” Diego asks, forcing his voice out into the air. No one responds or as much as looks at him. He clears his throat. “The plan. What are we doing?”

“Five?”

Five grunts his acknowledgement. Diego coughs. “Five, how is it coming along?”

With a sigh, Five turns around. “What is it?”

Diego gives him a look and then nods his head at the incomprehensible scrawl belonging to himself. “That. How’s it going?”

Five presses his lips together in a line. “I just need more time,” he mutters. “Soon. It won’t be long. Still, we keep getting supplies and, at the very least, we get Vanya used to the feeling of her powers – enough so that there is less of a risk. Once these equations are perfected, we figure out what to do then.”

Diego hates the plan. He hardly thinks it is a plan, but what else are they supposed to do? They need the equations and Five has been throwing himself into it every waking hour, and only pauses when Vanya forces him to eat or sleep.

He knows he can’t push it, but there’s only so long he thinks Klaus can stay here, and they’ve already surpassed that point.

His eyes seek out his brother once more. Shadow-lined eyes and chapped lips moving in a stream of muttered pleas. Blood under his nails, dirt and dust caked into his skin and his clothes and his hair. Face buried where the floor meets the wall.

He hates leaving Klaus there. Hates that they’re all going about their day, gathering their supplies, heating food, taking shifts sleeping with surviving clothes bundled beneath their heads as makeshift pillows, while Klaus begs and pleads and cries and tries to tear his own hair out. But there is nothing they can do.

With a sigh, Diego picks up his can of food and walks over to Klaus. He settles down next to him on the floor just by his head. He eyes the ravioli in the can, swirls it slightly, then sets it down and looks at Klaus. He stretches his legs out across the floor, inches closer until his thigh presses slightly against his head, ignores how Klaus twitches and half-flinches, and then he slides his hands beneath his head carefully, struggles to lift it off the ground that he never wants to let it leave, and moves it onto his lap.

He tips his head back to lean against the wall and eyes the sky above him, thick and dense and never-ending, and wonders what Klaus might see when he opens his eyes. He thinks of the silhouettes that crowded the reflection of his brothers’ eyes and decides that he doesn’t want to know.


	4. show me your face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the shorter chapter, but I hope you enjoy!

Sleep bleeds into reality in a way that is disorienting and leaves him never quite aware of himself. When he’s utterly exhausted, his body shuts down and he catches sleep in bursts of twenty minutes, half hours, and hardly any longer. He isn’t aware of falling asleep and he’s hardly aware of waking up.

His mind has the tendency of drifting. It’s similar to the times he smoked way too much, all of the weed he had, and he’d blink and realise that he’d been laying on the floor and twenty minutes had passed, awareness and reality suddenly coming back to him without him realising it had ever left.

It feels a lot like that. His ears continuously ring and never stop, and the screaming becomes a little more distant, as if muted white noise. Sometimes it retreats with his consciousness and he gets a while of blissful unawareness. Sometimes it rears over him like a tidal wave, growing and growing and growing, and it crashes over Klaus and threatens to drown him and he can’t escape it until he’s sobbing and hitting his hands against his ears (until someone comes close and wraps their hands around his wrists and holds them still.)

He doesn’t feel any more rested. He never does.

Sometimes he comes out of these half-alive states to the feel of gentle hands on; shifting him slightly, moving his hair, holding his jaw, trying to coax water past his lips. Sometimes he swallows it, sometimes he chokes and splutters. A couple of times he feels someone trying to coax him to eat, but food never quite gets past his throat, too tight with anxiety, and he chokes until it falls out his mouth and he can breathe again.

He tries, and often fails, to distract himself. He thinks about Dave; relives those moments in the Afterlife with him. He imagines the hands on his shoulders and in his hair are Dave’s, repeats his parting _I love you_ and tries to hear it said in Dave’s voice. He thinks about his eyes and his smile and that cat he feeds. He wishes, more than ever, that Dave could be with him in this moment, but he knows it’s probably for the best that he isn’t.

He hasn’t seen Ben in a while, but he knows this must be getting to him as well. Though they don’t scream his name, they still scream, and he knows Ben can hear it just as well as he can.

It’s that thought that makes him force his eyelids apart, forces himself to drop his hands from his ears to push himself upright off the floor. His body is stiff, aching and protesting each movement, but he pays it no mind.

“Ben?” He says, forcing himself to look around the place. He sees blood, and burns, and corpses falling apart all around him. “Ben? Ben, I – Ben?”

His brother shoves his way through the ghosts. He must have been with their siblings, he realises – and then he realises that he had forgotten his siblings were here, somewhere. Ben’s eyes are red-rimmed and the smile he offers Klaus is tense and pained despite the way he seems to perk up, seeing Klaus sitting up and looking around, seeming coherent.

Ben comes close, right next to him, so that his lips are by Klaus’ ear and Klaus’ lips are by his ears, and so that there is a deep chill in the right side of his chest where his shoulder partially goes inside of him, all blue and wavering and transparent.

“I’m right here, Klaus, are you okay?”

His voice is loud, nearly a yell, and even at that it seems like a whisper in comparison. Klaus knows his voice is probably no quieter.

“Ben, you can go,” he says. “You can leave. They – they have to end somewhere, and it’ll be quiet, and – you can go.”

Ben pulls back just enough so that Klaus can see the sad smile he gives him, and then he shakes his head. “I’m not leaving you,” he states. “I’m here for you, Klaus.”

Klaus shakes his head, shuffling forwards so that he is once more right by Ben. “Ben, please, don’t – don’t do this. You don’t have to. They’ll – they’ll follow me, but you can go, and-“ he inhales, offers a shaky smile. “Watch the sunsets, huh?”

Ben smiles at that too, head tipping to the side slightly. “Not just now, Klaus,” he says. “I’m here. I’m staying with you.”

Klaus gives Ben one last, pleading look, and wishes he could reach out for him and touch him like he had done in the theatre. He tries to; he lifts his hands and reaches for his face, but his hands just fall through him and Ben grimaces and flinches out of the way. Klaus laughs a little, though it sounds more like a sob.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, and then he closes his eyes and leans back until he hits the wall.

###

He can’t stop thinking about it.

The ghosts _have_ to end _somewhere_. They have to. The entire planet cannot be filled with them. And they can’t all be screaming all the time, either. Surely the ones further away don’t really know that it is him they’re all crowding, so they’re probably just silent and lost or muttering quietly, reliving their deaths or stuck in their own worlds. Maybe it’d give him a few hours of peace if he could just reach those ones.

With heavy limbs, Klaus sits upright once more. He inhales deeply, trying to steel himself against the screaming, struggling to maintain a bit of bravado, however brief it may be, and then he opens his eyes and looks upright. Not dark, but the sky is changing as the sun sinks low in the sky, an explosion of oranges and reds giving way to blue that grows dark and into ink.

He wonders how many nights have passed.

He closes his eyes, breathes. Beneath his fingers, he feels stones dig into them.

He opens his eyes again and looks around. Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts. Blood everywhere. They shift and shuffle. Through the shifting gaps between them, Klaus spies the doorway that leads out onto crowded streets.

Reminding himself that the ghosts aren’t corporeal, Klaus breathes once, twice.

He stands up and runs.

He hears the crack of necks snapping to follow him, hears furious screeching pick up in the dust he kicks up behind him. He bolts through corpses to the doorway, trying not to flinch or stop. He can go right through the ghosts, he doesn’t need to watch his step, doesn’t need to twist through the tiny gaps between them, doesn’t need to crawl through their legs or jump over the ones on the ground. He just needs to keep running.

He trips over rubble hidden beneath a ghost. He falls onto his hands and knees and then scrambles immediately back upright, shoving himself away from the corpse beneath him, sticking their hand through his stomach, and he keeps running down the street.

He can’t see where he’s going, but he will soon. They have to thin out; they have to end somewhere.

So he keeps running.

He can’t help but flinch away from the outstretched hands reaching for him, can’t help but duck and throw his own hands up to cover his face. Just because he knows he can run straight through them it doesn’t make it any easier to run straight into them.

He follows the street, trips and stumbles over rubble, runs into a destroyed car and shoves himself away from it. Dirt comes off on his hands.

The ghosts keep screaming.

Klaus grits his teeth together and keeps running. He doesn’t dare look back to see if they’re following him, if they’re shoving one another or dragging themselves across the ground in an attempt to keep up with him. He keeps his eyes either on the sky or in front of himself.

He keeps running, even when his lungs begin to burn and he feels dizzy from his breathlessness, when he struggles to even gasp and when his legs begin to burn and ache, his knees begin to grow weak and buckle. His approaching failure makes him grow desperate.

He needs to get away, he needs to find the end, he needs them to be quiet – he needs it with the desperation of a dying man. He pushes himself off walls, pushes himself off the floor when he tumbles forwards. But they just – they don’t end. They never end, they never fan out, they never lessen in numbers. They are everywhere, all pressed tightly against one another, packed together, all making some kind of noise whether it be quiet crying, choked gasps, horrific wailing or blood-curdling screams.

They never end.

His legs give out. He crashes to the ground, his head hitting a rock and everything goes static for a moment. His chest heaves for air and he can’t make his limbs move to stand up again.

He looks out in front of himself. Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts, as far as his eyes can see, all mangled and furious and terrified.

They never end. Klaus realises this now. They never end. There is no paradise where they end, where they thin out, where they quieten briefly. If there is, it’s far enough away that Klaus will never reach it. He’s doomed to be stuck here, surrounded by them until the little girl on a bike decides to let him rest.

There are hands on his shoulders. He realises that there is a face unmarred by fire in front of him; Diego. Eyebrows furrowed, eyes melting with concern. He looks up at something behind Klaus and his lips move in words drowned out by the unending screaming. Then Klaus is lifted off the floor with ease and he’s going back the way he came.

His head falls back and he watches each ghost as the person holding him unknowingly walks through them.

###

Maybe, he thinks, God or whoever it really is that he met will let him stay there this time.

He thinks it’s worth a shot. He can’t get the gun again, but he resigns himself to the fact that pain is temporary and that no physical pain can be any worse than being stuck here for any longer.

And so he lifts his head up off the ground and slams it back down. Pain filters through to him dully, and he blinks in response. The sky above him is dark now, he notices. He lifts his head and slams it back. This time the pain is enough to stun him for a moment. His lips part and the world seems to buffer like a video getting stuck and his eyelids flutter in response, before blinking the world back to clarity. It hurts. He does it again and to avoid any hesitation that he doesn’t really have but is afraid he might grow if the pain keeps increasing, he does it even harder.

His eyes roll slightly as if loose in his skull and he struggles to make them stay in places and finds it impossible to make them focus. He struggles to swallow back the rising nausea in his throat and he feels as if the world is spinning all around him.

He lifts his head and-

Hands catch it suddenly, slipping around the back of his head and holding it up from the floor. It takes him several moments to see Allison’s face above him. He had forgotten she was there. Was she always there? He really can’t be sure.

Either way, she’s there now, and she places herself firmly between Klaus and the floor and no amount of squirming will dislodge him from her lap. And plus, moving just makes him more nauseous and makes his eyes move elsewhere without him making them, so he stops moving and tries talking instead.

“Ally,” he tries to say, though he can’t be sure if the word comes out right or not because he can’t hear himself, “Ally, please, let me go, let me go, something – I need to do something, Ally, _please_ -“

Allison looks down at him with wet eyes and her face screws up before she looks away, battling herself to hold back tears. Finally, though, she looks back at him and shakes her head, and Klaus whines. When he tries to struggle once more, she doubles over and cradles his head in an awkwardly positioned hug, running her fingertips through his hair, her nails tickling along his pounding head in a soothing motion.

He can’t remember the last time they were close like this. Over a decade ago – probably even over a decade and a half. Everything went to hell after the mausoleum, after he broke his jaw and the painkillers silenced the ghosts, after Five left. He and Allison never were quite close after then. Once, though, they had been. He had painted her nails and she had painted his, and when no one else agreed to let her try and do their makeup, he had jumped on the chance. There had been many nights where he would sneak through to hers and they would have makeovers and fashion shows. After he left the Academy, though, he had probably spoken to her a grand total of less than ten times before they reunited at the funeral.

He closes his eyes and his fingers twitch over the ground but he can’t quite move his limbs, so he just succumbs to lying there limply. At least the pain in his head offers a distraction from the screaming, along with the way Allison shakes when she holds him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to let me know your thoughts!


	5. destroy me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and panic attacks.

Though he doesn’t always really process it, he enjoys the gentle touches that come to grace him every so often. The fingers that run through his hair, that stroke his cheek, settle on his shoulder. It’s gentle and comforting and when he realises that it’s happening he tries to lean into it, tries to encourage it. He isn’t sure if it works or not, but the touches keep coming and it’s good enough for him.

At one point, thin fingers part the hair on the back of his head and prod at the tender flesh there. Once more, the periodic attempts to get him to eat and drink return and they often end unsuccessfully. His stomach is constantly rolling in nausea and discomfort and the mere action of swallowing is difficult, especially when he’s busy trying to apologise to the corpses around him.

He hardly remembers the situation he’s in. That his siblings are around him, that he’s in a wasteland. His siblings must be struggling, he thinks. Have they got food? Water? Are they warm or freezing? What about the Commission and those assassins that kidnapped him? And Vanya, too, what about her and her powers, and Allison’s injured throat?

He ought to get up and try to help, but then a corpse tells him that if he so much as dares to look in their direction, and he has no idea what direction they are in because they’re everywhere, they will tear his eyes out.

Klaus doesn’t think being unable to see would be so unpleasant. He wouldn’t be paranoid about keeping his eyes covered or closed, wouldn’t be scared to so much as blink and catch a glimpse of the ghosts. It’d be one less stress for himself.

The idea is almost tempting.

His thoughts typically go in that kind of loop. He’s reminded of reality, he thinks about his siblings, he tries to tell himself to help, he gets scared and loses himself to the ghosts and the screaming.

He drifts. There’s screaming, but there always is. There’s ringing in his ears – there always is. His head hurts worryingly, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. His attention can never really stay on track for long; it ends up getting derailed. The screaming is a harsh distraction and it wins his attention every time.

He wonders what Reginald thinks. Can he see him? Does he know what is happening? He would probably think Klaus a coward, would probably see this as an ideal training opportunity to force him to try and make some progress with his powers. Klaus can’t stomach the idea.

Someone tries to coax him to drink water. He swallows it, but hardly a second after it hits his stomach, his body rebels and he retches, bile flooding up his throat. He pushes himself off the floor in time to throw up, then keeps himself proper up on his elbows.

He feels horrific. His head throbs and spins and he feels like he’s coming back from a heroin overdose, and yet somehow even worse than that.

Hands catch him just before he can topple over into his own mess and they urge him backwards away from it, lean him back against the wall. He inhales deeply, shakily, and rests his head back against the wall and tries to ignore the bitter taste in his mouth.

For some reason, it feels as if that just pushed him over the edge. His body feels heavy with despair and it feels as if he has just fallen back into a void, or that one has just blossomed beneath his ribs and is unfurling and spreading like a disease throughout his entire body.

“Please,” he whispers to no one in particular. Maybe to God. “Just stop. Please, stop, stop it.”

His cheeks feel wet.

Klaus wonders why God wants to prolong this, how it could possibly be necessary.

###

His eyes are open. Staring blankly ahead of himself, he realises that everything is blurry. Has looked as such since he had last hit his head off the floor. Had he done that? It makes his heart leap into his throat. Could he do that? Get rid of the gore and the ghosts from his sight and do it easily. He blinks rapidly as if trying to dislodge something from his eyes. His sight remains blurry.

If only, he thinks, he could do that for his hearing.

Unless he could.

He doesn’t quite know why his eyes are open. He feels like they have to be. He feels like something is going to happen and he needs to see it. His guts and his bones are all tense with anticipation, he finds it hard to breathe deeply. He feels the need to hold his breath, to remain deathly still, silent as a skeleton, and be on alert.

No one else seems to feel it. The ghosts don’t waver in their unending torment. He hasn’t seen Ben since he last spoke to him – for all he knows, he is right beside him, but there are ghosts hardly giving him three inches of space, let alone three feet, and he can’t see him. Nor can he see his siblings.

He keeps forgetting that they are actually there, somewhere. They might as well be miles away.

He allows himself to seize this moment of coherency and forces himself to push through the fear and the pain and the screaming to form thoughts.

He wonders what his siblings are doing. Are they training Vanya? He isn’t sure, but he thinks that every so often the ground rumbles beneath him like a miniature earthquake, so maybe they are. Are they trying to find a way back? Are they even still there? Maybe they left without him.

Maybe they left, thought Klaus as good as gone, and left him all alone with the ghosts, left him because he is no use and they can’t help him no matter what. He wouldn’t blame them, but still – the idea strikes a whole new fear in himself, one that makes it hard to breathe, and he finds himself scrambling upright and trying to clear his hazy sight, trying to look through the horde of ghosts to see his siblings.

“D-Diego?” He says, hesitant. Diego wouldn’t leave him, surely. He wouldn’t leave without trying to see if Klaus was well enough to come – unless he had, and Klaus hadn’t seen or heard him because of the ghosts. “Diego? _Diego_?” He calls, voice picking up, becoming more desperate. He can’t see, the ghosts won’t move, they won’t shut up-

Someone walks through the ghosts as if they aren’t there. Brown eyes swim into vision, full of concern. Sweat beads down Diego’s forehead. His stubble is growing out now, Klaus notices, and his hands are hot when they rest on his upper arms.

“Klaus, I’m right here, what’s wrong?” He asks, and the words only just reach his ears thanks to their close proximity. His eyes look him up and down. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Klaus’ whole body feels weak with relief and he’s almost convinced his knees might buckle in that second. He nods his head, then shakes it – he isn’t quite sure how to respond until he realises it isn’t a yes or no kind of question and his tongue dashes out across his chapped lips and he swallows, his throat torturously dry.

Diego urges Klaus to sit back down, sitting beside him, and repeats his line of interrogation.

“You’re here,” Klaus murmurs. The words are swallowed by a scream and Klaus reminds himself that Diego can’t hear the screams, so he can hear Klaus perfectly fine.

His brother nods, face pinching. “Of course I am,” he says. “We’re all just over there, Klaus.”

Klaus follows his gesturing hand to stare at a wall of corpses. He grimaces, nods anyway, and then closes his eyes. He rests his forearms on top of his knees and then rests his forehead against his arms.

Then there are arms wrapping around his torso and tugging him until he falls to the side with a startled yelp. He feels Diego’s chest against his back and then his own arms are being pinned to his chest, Diego’s arms reaching right around, hand digging almost painfully into his shoulder.

The hug is sudden, and unexpected, and desperate, and crushingly tight. It reminds him of the way he had held onto Dave when he had died.

“We’re all right here,” Diego says by his ear. “And we aren’t leaving you. I’m not fucking leaving you, Klaus.”

Klaus’ breath stutters in his throat. Diego’s fingers dig into his shoulder and it’s almost hard to breathe with how tight he’s holding him and he wonders if Diego thinks he’s dying. But the hug is comforting. It’s grounding and alive and reminds Klaus that he is alive, that he’s here, that Diego is here.

Klaus twists his hands so that he can hold Diego’s arms, clutching onto it, and he isn’t sure that Diego is the desperate one.

###

Diego tries to talk to him. Klaus knows he ought to use this moment to keep pushing forwards and try to know what is going on, how everyone else is going on. He knows that, but he can’t help but be selfish.

He fists his hand into Diego’s shirt, tugs him forwards while tipping his own head back so that his mouth is by his ear, and he whispers, “you need to get me out of here, Diego.”

Diego tenses by him. Klaus swallows, breathes. “I can’t do this, I can’t, you need to get me out of here.”

Diego’s hand squeezes his shoulder. “W-we’re trying,” he says. “We’re working on leaving, Klaus. It – it’ll be soon, I promise.”

Klaus screws his eyes shut. Soon, he repeats to himself. He has to trust Diego. They won’t leave him; they’re working on getting them out. He has to trust them.

He forces himself to nod.

Diego squeezes his shoulder once more reassuringly.

###

Diego leaves at some point. He apologises profusely, tells him he’ll be back. Klaus shrugs him off and lays down. What can he do about it?

He misses the warmth and comfort of the touch, though. It makes him feel alone, makes him feel as if he might be one of the ghosts, but he forces himself to understand that though he can’t see them, his siblings are only a few feet away.

He wishes Diego had stayed, or that someone had stayed.

Maybe it was the sudden burst of awareness and his grip on reality that spurred it on. Perhaps it was the hopelessness that festered like an ugly bruise throughout his bones that the ghosts probably feed on.

But either way, a coldness seems to seep deep into his bones. He doesn’t notice it at first until he’s shivering, trembling and trying to wrap his arms around himself. The cold steals his breath away and his hands feel it the worst, as if he had just sat and dipped them in a frozen lake and held them under the cold water for ages.

Someone touches him – grabs him, more like it. Klaus expects it to be one of his siblings and he tries to find the strength to turn and look at them.

The ghosts’ screaming seems to get louder as even more join in. Then there are more hands on him, harsh and violent and not at all like his siblings, and he opens his eyes to see ghosts in front of him, with their hands on him.

All the breath in his lungs escape. His eyes catch the ghost currently gripping his wrist, his wrist coated in a wispy blue light like it had been in the Icarus Theatre when he manifested Ben, and Klaus _screams_.

He throws himself forwards in an attempt to push through the ghosts and run, but there are so many it is physically impossible. His body collides with a crumbling corpse that feels as solid as a wall, and then there are hands on him everywhere.

They tangle in his hair, in his clothes, grab his arms and his legs. Fingers hook past his lips and pull so hard he thinks his lips might tear. He thinks they might pull his hair out in clumps. Hands go around his neck and tug him down. He falls not onto the floor but on top of corpses that don’t even seem to notice it; they just keep screaming his name and reaching for him, bellowing demands that Klaus save them, that he help them, pass on messages, that he pay.

Beneath all the screaming, very faintly, he thinks that he hears his siblings. They are screaming too; confused, terrified. He prays that they aren’t going for his siblings too.

He tries to shake his hand as if he can simply shake off the glow and turn his powers off, but the glow clings tightly to his hands like cobwebs and the ghosts stay as solid as a statue. And plus; hands cover his in grips so tight he fears they’re going to crush the bones in his hands.

Klaus chokes on screams and sobs and hands that cover his mouth, cover his nose, on fingers that grab on his jaw and slide past his lips, on breaths that won’t come. He tries to move, tries to tug and shove himself free, but it seems as if every inch of his body is being grabbed and pulled in a different direction.

He feels like he’s blind with terror. He doesn’t know what to do, he can’t do anything. He feels pain shoot through him from different places and the ghosts don’t stop grabbing him, trying to take him for their own selfish demands.

Something unravels inside of him. It snaps free and collapses like an avalanche, like an entire building coming down on top of him. He wishes it would.

He feels as if this is happening to someone else. He feels as if he’s only watching it happen to himself but not actually experiencing it. He can see blood run down his pale skin, can see spit and blood fly from the ghosts’ mouths as they scream obscenities at him, can see the tears glisten on his cheeks, but he doesn’t feel it.

And then, as fast as it had started, it stops.

The ghosts fall through him all of a sudden and lay dazed, as if they were the ones just attacked. They moan feebly, weakly, or maybe that’s Klaus making that noise.

Solid figures suddenly surround him and then there are hands on him again and Klaus yells. He lashes out, kicking and hitting and shoving the hands away. The touch thrusts him back into his body and they can touch him, they can touch him, they can touch him-

Klaus screams. He shoves offending hands away and scrambles back along the floor.

“No! No, no, no, don’t touch me – _don’t touch me_!” He screams. His back slams into a wall, his hands go up to cover his face, and he keeps screaming incoherent pleas and threats until he’s just screaming and cowering in on himself.

He wants the distance back. He wants that separation between himself and his body, wants to feel numb again as if he doesn’t really exist, because he can’t breathe, _he can’t breathe_ , and he tastes blood, and his whole body hurts, and _they can touch him_ -

###

It’s unnerving to see Klaus look completely lost, searching for him, when he’s right there.

He had said his name and Diego had shot up to his feet, watching Klaus struggle up onto his feet, looking around. He had looked right at him and he had raised his voice and called his name as if they were streets apart.

It’s unnerving. He doesn’t understand how Klaus couldn’t see him and the idea that he forcibly buries deep in his mind is too unsettling to confront.

He knows Klaus had tried to describe, had told them the ghosts had been unending, crowding around him, but it was hard to remember and hard to believe when he couldn’t see it himself.

The idea, though, that Klaus had been afraid, struck with the sudden idea that he had been left all alone, was painful.

Not that he had much time to confront that.

It happens suddenly.

Five is explaining his equations, occasionally back-tracking his words to _dumb them down_ , as he says, so they can understand it, when it happens.

All of a sudden, they’re being crushed, and there is a god awful _noise_ that sounds louder than a gun shot by his ear.

He rushes to his feet and is almost bowled over by a – a thing, a person, a _corpse_.

His breath gets stuck in his throat and his hands clamp down on his ears.

“What the fuck is happening?” He yells, looking around and shoving his way to his siblings all crowding together. He looks to Five, expecting this to be some attack from the Commission, but Five looks just as surprised and confused as any of them. If he’s afraid, he masks it well.

“What is that _noise_?” Vanya cries, clamping her hands over her ears and screwing her eyes shut. Diego can feel the floor tremble slightly beneath his feet.

“Klaus,” says Five, blurting it out.

All eyes fall on Five, who pointedly looks around. “Ghosts,” he states, and he grows a little paler. “It’s the ghosts. He’s making them corporeal.”

Diego feels his jaw slacken. He turns around, expecting to see Klaus, but the things – the _ghosts_ – block his view entirely. They are completely crushed in a crowd of them and they’re all trying to scramble over one another to get to Klaus.

They are covered in burns and ash. Skin peels off of their bones and blood oozes everywhere. Their hands are freezing cold when they shove at him and they look nothing like Ben did when he was manifested, they look like rotting corpses that have been brutally murdered and discarded carelessly in a ditch. They have no humanity to their eyes; they look feral, like an animal, fuelled by fury and hatred.

And the _noise_ -

It is deafening. It makes his head spin and makes him feel sick to his stomach, makes his skin crawl. He feels suffocated by it. It takes him several moments to realise it is the combined sound of all of their screams.

“What is he doing?” Luther hisses, lifting his head to try and seek Klaus out. It’s clear where he is; all of the ghosts flood to that one area, but they can’t see Klaus beyond all the ghosts.

“I doubt he’s doing this on purpose,” Five snaps, and his words are almost drowned out. Diego grits his teeth and turns from them, tries to shove his way through the bloody mass of people around him, but he can’t help but cringe and flinch away every time one turns to look at him with glossy, bloodshot eyes and a loose jaw with blood dripping past their lips.

Is this what Klaus sees? What he hears?

The realisation hits him like a blow to the gut. It staggers him for a moment and he has to brace himself and struggle to take a deep breath, because it is what Klaus sees and what he hears, non-stop. What he has seen and heard since they landed here.

Suddenly, Diego understands why he killed himself.

He can’t get to Klaus. The ghosts form an impenetrable wall around his brother and not even Luther can breach it.

So, they do what they can; they yell.

“Klaus! Klaus, you need to stop!”

“Stop this, Klaus!”

“Klaus, please!”

He tries to catch a glimpse of his brother, but it’s utterly impossible, and Diego feels adrenaline and determination give way to fear as the ghosts crush around him, as they continue to wail and scream until he fears his ears might begin to bleed, and –

Then it stops.

It all disappears and everyone falls to their knees without the ghosts pressing around them to hold them upright.

Everything goes silent. The palms of his hands sting from where stones dig into them.

Then, breaking the silence, aside from muttering from his other siblings, he hears whimpering. Breathless, spluttered whimpers and moans, and he finds the source of the sound to be Klaus.

He is on the floor a few feet away, his eyes wide and staring blindly above himself.

Despite the fact the blood from the ghosts that had gotten all over he and the others disappearing, blood still stains Klaus’ pale skin, and he realises that it’s his own. He’s covered in cuts and wounds all sluggishly oozing blood. His chest rises and falls rapidly with unsteady breaths and his body twitches uncontrollably, like violent tremors.

Five reaches his side first. He reaches out and settles his hand on his shoulder, leaning over him to try and get into his line of sight.

Klaus makes a noise. Not quite a scream, but one choked down in his throat, and he shoves Five away roughly. Luther frowns, tries to hold Klaus’ shoulders down and keep him in place, and Klaus thrashes wildly, kicking and shoving and hitting and screaming like a madman.

“Let – let him go, Luther,” says Vanya, urgent, tugging his arms back until Luther, hesitantly, complies and lets his hands fall off of Klaus. Free, Klaus scrambles back until he hits the wall behind him with enough force to send a few stones loose, and he keeps screaming, covering his face with his hands.

Somehow, it’s worse than all of the screams of the ghosts combined.

“Don’t touch him,” says Five, and they all remain a few feet away, tense and awkward and utterly lost.

Diego watches, hovering on the balls of his feet, as Klaus’ fingers tangle into his hair close to the back of his head, and how his voice turns hoarse and turns into sobs.

Feeling light headed and sick, Diego sits down with a thud, his mind reeling, head throbbing, his lungs still a little breathless, and he looks around and sees everyone else in pretty much the same state.

All confused, all scared, all completely and utterly helpless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know it gets worse before it can get better


	6. glowing eyes

“I know, I know, I know – _I know_ that, of course I know that.” A laugh tumbles past his lips unbidden. “None of you _shut up_ about it, I know.” Briefly, his voice loses the airy, playful tone and his teeth grind together. His hands press harder upon the sides of his head and his nails scratch his scalp. Don’t they know that he knows? How could he not, when it is all they scream about. He laughs again and shakes his head. “Should have done a better job when you had the chance. It’s not happening again, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not.” He opens his eyes, looks around at the ghosts cornering him against the wall, and then he grimaces and hides his face in his knees again, eyes still wide open.

He knows the fact that they all want to kill him. He knows how they would do it, knows exactly what part of his body they would go for, how they’d dig their fingers into his skin until it tore open, knows how they’d gouge his eyes out and squeeze the bones in his wrist to dust. He knows this, they don’t need to keep repeating it. They sound so sure of themselves, he thinks, and it’s hilarious, really, because they had the chance to do everything they are promising, and they didn’t do it.

They didn’t tear his throat out. They didn’t rip his tongue out of his mouth, didn’t pull his ribs out of his chest and bend them backwards, didn’t gut him, hadn’t done any of that.

They tried, though. There is blood on his hands and probably blood in a lot of different places too, but he can’t be sure, there are no mirrors around. But he’s alive, and relatively whole. His body is whole. He isn’t sure he can say the same about his mind.

Did they go for his head? He’s sure they did. He thinks they might have dug their fingers right into his mind and tore into it without mercy, crushed it into dust that keeps getting spread everywhere and being blown apart.

His thoughts are all a mess. They jump rapidly from one train of thought to another, his emotions jumping from unhinged amusement to breath-taking fear and utter despair. He can’t control it and he feels like he has whiplash from it all.

They can touch him, they won’t stop screaming. They know, now, that they can touch him, and they’re just waiting for his powers to act up again so they can truly tear him apart.

Klaus doesn’t think he would try and stop it even if he could. Let them do it, he thinks. God can’t send him back forever.

_“You’re mine, you’re mine, I get to kill you, I’m going to do it-“_

_“Do it again, do it, do it, do it, bring me back! Bring me back! Klaus!”_

_“I hate you! I hate you! I want you dead!”_

“I know!” Klaus snaps. He groans, slams his hands down onto his ears and rocks forwards. “I know! Shut up! Just _shut up_!” His hands grind down against his ears and his fingers tug his hair until his head throbs. He wishes he could just crush his skull inwards with his hands and be done with it all. He just wants some peace. He can’t hear himself _think_.

Maybe if he’s quiet, they’ll be quiet. He moves one hand from his ear to his mouth, stuffs a knuckle past his bloody lips and bites down on it to keep stray words from tumbling out his mouth. If he stays quiet, maybe they’ll be quiet.

It doesn’t work. He screws his eyes shut, curls his fingers around his ears, hisses words beneath his breath and he isn’t really sure what he’s saying, nor does he really care, either.

_They can touch him, they can touch him, they can touch him._

His blood feels like it has been ignited, set alight in his veins, hot with terror. When will they touch him again? When will they get him? It’ll happen, and they know it, and he knows it. It is just the simple matter of _when_.

He chews his bottom lip anxiously. Oh, he thinks, if only Reginald could see him now. Reaching his _true potential_. He laughs, and laughs again. His true potential! Being torn apart by his own powers! After so many years of them promising him to do such a thing, they get the chance now! Finally, the threats he’d listened to for years, for decades, are being fulfilled, and really, it’s almost cathartic. The ghosts had promised violence and things worse than death for as long as he can remember, and the anxiety of _what if they could_ is gone, because they _can_ , and they are, and they will!

Klaus laughs. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs; loud and high and unhinged, leaving him breathless and dizzy and with the taste of blood on his tongue. He swallows thickly, gasps for air, and chokes on a laugh.

_“Why are you laughing? What’s funny? I’m dead! I’m dead!”_

_“You’re a murderer! You did this! This is your fault!”_

_KlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus_

Klaus nods his head weakly, and his smile wavers, lips quivering, and his laugh turns to a whine, high pitched in his throat, and his hands twitch over his ears. Covering them won’t do anything; the ghosts are in his skull, there is no escaping them and their demanding voices. He slumps, suddenly exhausted, against the wall. It feels rough and cool against his forehead. Maybe he ought to just listen to the ghosts. They are so demanding, maybe he really ought to just listen to them. See what they have to say, what they want him to do.

Maybe, if he just does what they want, if only a few things, then some of them might leave, or they might get quieter. He could only hope.

His hands run down the side of his face, heavy and sluggish. “Please,” he mumbles. “Please, my _head_ , please.” He inhales shakily, screwing his eyes shut. His head _hurts_ ; has been hurting for ages, really, but he’s been doing his best to ignore it. His head is in agony, and his ears ring, and he’s bitten the inside of his lips and his tongue, and he sees and smells and tastes blood, and he’s going to die, they’re going to tear him apart like wild dogs, and, and-

There’s a touch on his head. Gentle, soft, fingers carding through his hair, brushing his cheek in a comforting fashion, and _they can touch him_ , it’s happening again-

He flinches back, scrambles away from the touch until he’s backed into a corner, eyes wide, and he keeps muttering; “no, no, no, no, no, no, please, no, don’t touch me, please, please, not again, please-“

The touch is gone quickly. He’s alone again. Alone, perfectly alone, except he never is, but he’s not being touched and that’s good enough. He curls into himself and cradles his head in his hands, continues to murmur quiet pleas, half-incoherently, and tries to drown out everything unsuccessfully.

###

He stares at his hands.

“What?”

He had caught a few coherent words a moment ago, but in response to this question, all of the ghosts uproar incoherently and he can’t make out the voice he wants to. He waves his hands dismissively as if he can shake off the voices he doesn’t want to hear.

_Everyone is dead they’ll die too they’re going to die they’re going to die they’re going to die-_

_Kill them now, kill them, kill them, kill them, kill them-_

_It’s not fair, it’s not fair, they killed me, they killed me, they killed my family!_

Klaus stares at his hands. Did they kill everyone? It really isn’t fair if they did. It’s horrible if they did. Did they?

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

_They did! They did, they did, they did, and they’re right beside you-_

_My child – they killed my child! Do something! Do something!_

_Move, Klaus! Move! Move!_

Klaus uses the wall to heave himself up onto his feet. Black spots dance in his vision and he leans against the wall for several moments, looking around, wide-eyed at his crowd, seeking guidance. What was he doing? He has to – he has to – what?

Some try to grab at him and he flinches out of their reach, standing on his toes and cowering in the corner, hands clasped together and held by his chin, his shoulders hunched. A few others try to coax him elsewhere, shuffle and shove at each other, shifting until they force Klaus to walk or else they’ll be standing right on top of him. He stumbles unwillingly along, ghosts closing in behind him and opening up in front of him until his feet touch something and they all nod eagerly. He stares down at what he is standing by.

“What?”

_Take it, Klaus, take it, take it, take it, take it_

_You know what to do, you have to, you have to-_

_KlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus_

He crouches down, elbows resting on his knees, and then he reaches out. His fingers ghost over leather discarded in a pile in front of himself, and then his hand goes to the knife sticking out of one strap. He tugs it out, holds it in his hands.

The ghosts sing like a choir.

_YesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesKlausyes_

If he could feel anything, he might preen under the near-praise.

He doesn’t know what they want him to do with the knife, but it feels nice in his hand. He curls his fingers tight around it, the handle heavy and solid in his hand, and he runs his fingertips along the blade. Sharp, clean, precise. It reminds him of someone. He can’t remember who.

“I want to sit down,” he tells the ghosts, looking up from the glinting blade to stare at them. He wants to feel a wall against him; hates being completely and utterly surrounded. The ghosts stare back at him. Above him, someone wails, horrific and haunting. “I want to sit down, I want to sit down, I want to sit down, move, move, move,” Klaus urges, and he looks down at the ground to avoid looking at the ghosts, clutches his knife to his chest like an anchor, and shuffles slowly towards the ghosts, hoping that they’ll part and let him through. They don’t.

He sucks in a breath, closes his eyes, and walks through them. It feels like someone has just thrown a bucket of icy water over him, chilling him to the core. He shuffles forwards awkwardly, stretching out his free hand to search for a wall, and keeps walking until he touches one. He sighs heavily, presses himself against it, and follows it to a corner where he drops down onto the floor, facing the corner and resting his forehead against the walls, hiding.

He runs his fingers over the knife in his grasp. He feels like it’s important, somehow. It isn’t his. The memory of its owner lingers just beneath the surface of his mind and he struggles to grasp it, so he just knows that it is someone important, probably.

He can’t remember what the ghosts wanted him to do with it; their yelling has turned once more into that of indistinguishable wails and screams that all melt into one consistent noise, so he gives up on trying to seek answers from them for the time being. 

He realises he can hardly remember getting up in the first place.

###

“Klaus-“

_KlausKlausKlausKlausKlausKlaus-_

“Please, listen to me, Klaus, look at me.”

It’s funny, Klaus thinks. This ghost thinks it is more important than the others, more worthy of his attention than the others. None of them are. Klaus tells him.

“You aren’t important,” he mutters, eyes closed. “You’re all dead. You burned to death, like everyone else. Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

“K-Klaus, look at me, _please_ ,” begs the ghost, voice wavering. “You need – need to give me the knife, Klaus.”

He had forgotten he had that even though it has never left his grasp. He tightens his hold on it, curls around it and presses himself against the wall, shaking his head.

“It’s mine,” he declares. “It’s mine – you can’t take it, I need it, it’s important-“

“You don’t need it, Klaus,” they insist. “It – it’s dangerous, Klaus, you might hurt yourself with it-“

“I don’t care,” says Klaus. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. It’s mine, leave me alone – leave! Just leave!” Klaus snaps, and he curls his hands around his ears, the knife cool on his skin. The knife is his, but it belongs to someone else, and it’s important and he needs it and he can’t remember getting it in the first place and they won’t _shut_ _up_.

He’s so tired.

“Klaus,” pleads the ghost. “Please, just look at me.”

Klaus shakes his head. Why don’t they understand that he just wants to be alone? He won’t do anything for them, he won’t listen to them, he won’t look at them. He just wants to be alone.

###

“Dave?”

His eyelids flutter without the strength to fully open them. His head hurts, and he can tell there’s light. Did Dave open the curtains? He knows that Dave gets bad hangovers, it doesn’t make sense why he’d do that. He reaches one hand out, tries to find Dave, but the bed beside him is empty.

“Dave? Dave? Where are you?”

There is a sudden desperation bubbling up within himself, sudden and violent and choking him. He needs Dave, where is Dave, he misses Dave, why isn’t Dave here?

He knows why. There is blood on his hands, slipping through his fingers as he tries, and fails, to staunch the bleeding in Dave’s chest. He pulls his hands, slick and wet and hot and dripping crimson, to his chest, tries to shake the blood off but it never ends, and he can hear the way Dave chokes on blood in the back of his throat, and he can’t get him to sit up because of the rain of bullets around them.

He gasps for breath; his lungs burn. Dave is dead.

_DaveisdeadDaveisdeadDaveisdeadDaveisdead_

Klaus curls onto the floor beside his corpse and wails.

###

The ringing in his ears is loud. His head hurts. His hands don’t look like his.

_Youareusyouareusyouareusweareyou_

He doesn’t _want_ to be like them. He doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t. He feels like, if he watches hard enough, the skin and flesh on his bones will start to melt off.

He drags his arm across the floor and back to his body. Lifts his hand up to cradle his head. He looks up towards the sky, tilts his hips so he’s flat on his back. He sees a shifting, inhuman mass crowding around him, dripping blood and moaning, yelling, screaming.

He lifts his head up, nearly putting his chin to his chest, and then he slams it down. The ghosts sing praises at the motion, their voices an indistinguishable roar like the blood in his ears, and he’s so tired. He does it again. He does it again. The blow winds him and everything goes white-hot and ringing for a moment, static, and it fades like a dying star.

Everything is dark. He can’t see the shifting shapes of corpses above him; everything blurs together. He can’t see the broken bones, the melting flesh, the blood. He sees dark shapes, and he sees light shapes, and they are so blissfully blurry and free of blood and gore, and he laughs.

Does it count as a win? He thinks so. He wants to tell the ghosts to fuck off, that they lose, but he can’t stop making that awful noise. He covers his face with his hands and lets the pain in his head explode and take everything away from him.

###

Hands on his face. Grabbing his jaw, pulling his mouth open. Voices shush him when he tries to scream. His body is too heavy to move. Shapes move in front of him, dark blurs, and there are hands, too many hands, on his back and his wrists, rolling him onto his side, sitting him up, then fingers in his mouth and hands on his jaw stopping him from biting down. Things sit on his tongue, heavy and bitter, and then he’s drowning; water flooding his mouth and he swallows it all, gags when he feels things tumble down his throat, and the water stops. He tries to get up, tries to run, but his head spins and everything goes dark before he even hits the floor.

###

There is gentle murmuring around him. A hand stroking his head. He flinches, but only slightly. Large hands, calloused, warm.

“Dave?”

Voices try to talk to him. He feels everything get distant and he whines. “Dave, Dave, please, I don’t want to go-“ His tongue feels heavy in his mouth and he mumbles, whines, babbles until everyone disappears.

###

It is quiet.

He thinks he’s dead.

The quiet brings a sudden storm of anxiety and excitement inside of him. It’s unfamiliar, almost unwelcome. It puts him on edge. The ringing in his ears seems deafening now. He waits for the screaming to start.

“Klaus? Are you awake?”

He flinches from the voice, shattering the quietness, though the voice is soft and gentle and tinged with concern. It isn’t loud.

“Can you hear us?” Asks another familiar voice. “Klaus?”

He hears stones skitter around, hears footsteps crunch closer, and he doesn’t like these sounds. They’re too quiet, too small. Where are the screams?

He pries his eyes open. Flinches when he realises the shapes around him are people.

“Hey, hey, it’s us, Klaus,” says a voice. Where does he know that voice from? He fumbles through his hazy memories and it feels like wading through a swamp.

“Can you still see them?” Another voice, irritatingly familiar. Not ghosts?

His throat hurts. He rasps, “ _Five_?”

“I’m right here, Klaus,” he says, and the voice echoes from an indistinguishable blur. “Can you hear us alright?”

“Where are they?” Klaus asks, looking around as if he might be able to see anything. He sees light, and dark. “Where – where are they?”

“Are the ghosts gone?”

“Klaus-”

“Ben?” He turns his head sharply. He hears someone’s breath catch in their throat, and not because there is blood in it.

“I’m right here, Klaus,” says Ben, and he slumps in relief. “Everyone else is here, too. The ghosts are – they aren’t gone completely, but they’re far, they’re quiet. They found a pharmacy, Klaus, and they got you some pills.”

“Oh,” Klaus breathes. It explains why he feels like his body is full of lead and his head full of cotton, why he feels like time is spinning rapidly around him. They got drugs from a pharmacy, god knows what they were and if they mixed them. The high isn’t familiar.

“Klaus,” says a voice, says Five, dragging him back to reality. “The ghosts?”

“It’s quiet,” he mumbles. He feels so tired.

“Are you okay?” Asks someone. He recognises the voice as Diego.

“He’s got a concussion, look at his eyes,” Five murmurs, “but after everything he’s been doing to his head, that was obvious.” There is a gentle tap to his cheek. “Klaus, follow my finger.”

Klaus stares. “ _Klaus_ ,” Five says, frustration seeping into his tone. “Follow my-“

“I can’t see.”

The silence is back. After spending so long craving it, one would think he’d revel in it. It feels suffocating.

“What?”

“I can’t see,” Klaus repeats. Unfazed, Klaus rests his head on the floor and closes his eyes. “I’m tired,” he mumbles. It seems to shake everyone out of their daze.

“You need to stay awake, Klaus, fuck,” says Five, tapping his face irritatingly until Klaus peels his eyes open. He tries to wriggle out of his grip but his hands stay cupping his face. Klaus never wants to be touched again.

“W-what do you mean? Klaus?” Diego asks, coming closer. His hand rests on his cheek. _Dave?_

He tries to blink the memory of Dave’s hands aside, though until someone shakes his shoulder lightly, it’s hard to drag himself back to the present.

“It’s okay,” Klaus mumbles, tongue heavy in his mouth, slurring his words together. “They’re gone now.”

They’re saying things again, trying to get his attention, but everything just gets more distant and muffled, and he’s so _tired_. He lets himself fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baby boy :(


	7. turn to a hole in the floor

He hadn’t thought it possible, but Klaus gets even worse.

Following the incident of manifesting the ghosts, Diego feels the need to mourn his brother. Really, that grief he felt when holding his corpse to his chest, gunshot still echoing in his ears, has not left him. The moment Klaus hit his head on the ground for the first time since coming back, he had known, deep down, that things were only ever going to get worse. At the very least, they wouldn’t get better.

He isn’t sure that he prefers Klaus alive. He had been so peaceful dead, limp, resting in his arms, under no torment. Happy. And now? Sure, his brother is alive, but it is arguably worse. The sound his brother makes is easily worse than that horrific screaming in the brief time the ghosts had been corporeal. The guttural moaning, the never ending wails, the terrified screams, the begging. The sight of Klaus slamming his hands down onto his ears as if he wants to crush his skull inwards still left Diego feeling nauseous. It didn’t help Klaus was still covered in blood and blossoming bruises from the ghosts’ attack on him. If they tried to touch him, Klaus would start that horrific, ear-bleeding screaming and desperate begging again, and Diego feared only traumatising him further, so they gave up. They couldn’t help him, couldn’t see or clean his wounds, couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t do a single fucking thing but think that maybe, just maybe, Klaus should have stayed dead.

None of them had brought that thought up, though, of course. No one had dared to say such a thing – how could you wish your own brother dead? It was a disgusting thought, one that made Diego feel horrible. He was a horrible person for thinking it would be better if he was dead. But, maybe, just maybe, it was the right thing to think, and the reason he was horrible is because he prolongs this state of torture in a selfish need to keep Klaus alive, because _that’s his brother_.

They can’t sit and cradle his head in their laps when he hits it, again and again, until his hair is matted with blood and Diego eyes Klaus and waits for him to live out his last moments, covered in dirt and dust and his own blood, writhing in the debris of the Academy, moaning in agony and fear. But he never dies. He never receives such a mercy.

Once, while everyone else sleeps and Diego takes night watch (ignoring Five who hasn’t slept since Klaus’ manifesting accident) he considers killing him. A swift cut to his throat. He knows how to kill someone within seconds; it would be quick, more merciful than keeping him alive. His grip tightens around the handle of his knife and Five stares at him as if he knows what he’s thinking. Diego wonders if Five has held his rifle in his hands and considered pointing it at his brother’s head and pulling the trigger. It would be quicker than Diego’s knives. But Five says nothing, and returns to his equations, and Diego doesn’t get up. He sits, holds his knife, and swallows back his nausea and hates himself.

Klaus doesn’t eat. He doesn’t drink. He holds one-sided conversations, and stares blindly at a random spot for hours, and he screams and he wails and begs for someone called Dave. Sometimes he does and says things that make absolutely no sense. Sometimes he stares straight at his siblings with wide, blind eyes, and say shit like; _“I’m not a murderer.”_

That, of course, encourages a discussion.

“What if he’s dangerous,” Luther murmurs. Though Diego notices that the tone in his voice is not one of judgement but rather of concern, it spikes his anger. He gestures viciously at Klaus.

“Yeah, he’s real fuckin’ dangerous right now, isn’t he? Look at him, you idiot,” he snaps. And they all do.

Klaus is sitting slumped against the wall, eyes half-lidded. He looks utterly exhausted. His lips move constantly, in words that are hardly more than a breath. _“Please. I want to go home. I’m so tired. I want Dave. Please, please, please, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me go. Please.”_

Luther gives him a look. “He also said that he didn’t want to kill people,” he states, voice hushed as if Klaus might hear them. Diego thinks that’s stupid; Five shot a vulture and Klaus didn’t even twitch at the gunshot. Luther sighs, shoulders slumping. “Not intentionally, obviously. But still.”

Diego shakes his head, taking a few steps in Klaus’ direction but coming to a stop beside Luther. “Fuck you, Luther. _Fuck you_.”

And then he walks to Klaus and sits down opposite him. He doesn’t know what he thinks he’ll do. Klaus keeps whispering to himself, half-delirious, and Diego doesn’t dare touch him.

He’s never felt so useless.

###

It happens while they’re out.

They managed to drag Five away from his obsessive equation-writing to lead the way to a place they can get some real water to try and clean up. They haven’t showered or bathed more than poured a bottle of water over their heads, and Allison insists they have to.

It takes a long time to get there.

It takes a long time to leave at all.

“We can’t – we can’t leave him here by himself,” says Vanya, looking at Klaus. He’s on his back, hips twisted, one hand on his chest that rises and falls rapidly, the other outstretched by his side. His eyes are closed but his eyelids are fluttering rapidly and Diego knows he isn’t asleep or unconscious. His breath is too close to a panic attack for Diego to feel comfortable.

“We can’t take him,” Five mutters. “It’s – it’s a while to get there, though. We can’t make two trips in one day.”

“I’ll-“

“Diego, you’re covered in blood,” Five snaps harshly. His eyes are lined by shadows and the look on his face makes Diego close his mouth instantly. He sighs, pinches his nose. “I have the gun. He hasn’t moved in hours. If we go, we go now rather than sitting and waiting for him to knock himself out.”

Diego presses his lips together. His stomach drops at the thought of just – just leaving Klaus there. He had promised. He had _promised_ he would stay with him. He feels the need to be sick.

“Let’s go,” Luther mutters. “We’ll be quick about it. We’ll fill up the two buckets we have and bring them back and we’ll be fine for a while.”

Still unconvinced, Diego swallows down the bile rising in his throat and nods.

###

It was the wrong choice.

When they come back, clean, in new clothes they raided from a department store and carrying buckets of water, Klaus has moved.

He is sitting upright in the corner, head against the wall, muttering.

He’s holding one of Diego’s fucking knives.

His stomach drops and he almost drops the water he’s carrying along with it. He had taken that harness off ages ago and he was sure he had all his knives with him instead, in his pockets, but he must have left one in for some unknown, stupid reason.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Five curses, and they all stand in the crumbling doorway and stare at Klaus, running his fingertips over the knife blade and clutching it to his chest. Still covered in blood, none of them can tell whether or not he hurt himself with it, but the blade is miraculously clean.

“We need to get that off him,” says Luther, setting aside the water he’s carrying and then walking towards Klaus. Five teleports in front of him just before he can reach him, blocking his way.

“And if you touch him, he’s going to fucking slash at you with that,” he hisses. He cranes his neck to look at Klaus, pursing his lips in thought. “We can’t just take it.”

“I’ll try,” Diego offers. Five raises an eyebrow at him but nods, and they all watch him as he approaches Klaus slowly. He crouches nearby, leaving a little space between them – enough that it’ll give him time to get out of the way should Klaus lash out at him with the knife.

“Klaus,” he says, and his mind flashes back to that god awful screaming he had heard so he clears his throat and lifts his voice. “Please, listen to me, Klaus, look at me.” He ducks his head, trying to catch a glimpse of his face, though his brother just tenses and shakes his head.

“You aren’t important,” Klaus mutters, his voice airy and breathless, ragged and hoarse. “You’re all dead. You burned to death, like everyone else. Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Klaus’ face pinches and he sucks in a ragged breath, keeps muttering incoherently to himself. Diego sighs, glancing back at his siblings. The only reaction he gets is a load of helpless looks and shrugs.

He turns back to Klaus. He reaches a hand out only to retract it again quickly, knowing it will only make things worse. “K-Klaus, look at me, please,” he insists, and he hates how his voice wavers. “You need – need to give me the knife, Klaus.”

Klaus’ face twitches. Diego sees his grasp on the weapon tighten even further and he shakes his head swiftly. “It’s mine,” his brother says, sounding desperate. “It’s mine, you can’t take it, I need it, it’s important-“

“You don’t need it, Klaus,” Diego says. “It – it’s dangerous, Klaus, you might hurt yourself with it-“

“I don’t care.” His voice is sharp, hot and bitter. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. It’s mine, leave me alone – leave! Just leave!” His voice picks up to a yell, though sounds more desperate than angry, and almost immediately he returns to his indistinguishable muttering, too fast and too quiet for Diego to make out.

Slumping in defeat, he leans back. Biting his bottom lip, Diego tries one more time, his voice low and weak. “Klaus. Please, just look at me.”

And, as expected, Klaus just inhales sharply and shakes his head; picks up his quiet ranting and begging like a prayer, clutching Diego’s knife to his chest tightly like a life line.

Diego stands up. He longs to reach out and touch him, to just shake Klaus out of this state and bring back the brother he knows. It almost angers him – Klaus stole his fucking knife and what for? He doesn’t even know why he has it. Klaus never hinted that this was what his powers could be like. He kept his mouth shut when they first arrived and didn’t tell anyone until he came back from death.

He isn’t mad at Klaus himself. He can’t be – not when he looks down and his brother is covered in bruises and scratches, blood staining his clothes and messing his hair, some dried and some fresh because he keeps reopening the wounds or never letting them close in the first place; screaming and begging and simply so out of it.

Diego watches Klaus. He rocks slightly as he speaks, and he wonders if he is aware that he’s doing it. He doubts he’s aware of anything.

Diego can’t shake the thought that letting Klaus die would have been the most merciful option they could have given him before it got this bad.

He turns and looks at his other siblings. He shakes his head. “I don’t think he’s going to hurt himself with it, though,” he offers, and they all cling to it and tell themselves that it will all be fine.

He turns around, putting his back to Klaus as if it might shut out that painful sound of whimpered pleas, and he perches himself on a rock, resting his chin on his hand and staring down at the rubble between his feet.

###

“Five?”

Diego’s eyes flick up to watch Vanya approach their brother. He can guess what she is going to say before she even says it; her training. They have approached the topic perhaps a handful of times since arriving here. She is getting better at reigning it in, at suppressing it, but she hasn’t had much of a chance of actually controlling them.

Five’s shoulders tense and he inhales deeply. If it was anyone else, he would probably snap at them. As it is, it is Vanya, so he turns around. “I know what you’re going to say,” he tells her. “I understand. But I am so close to figuring this out, I can’t stop now.”

Vanya bites her lip, nods her head. “I know,” she says, nodding once more. “But I think you should eat something.”

Five blinks, expression briefly flickering as if he didn’t expect that. Then he shakes his head, dismissing the idea. “Later.”

He says it with enough finality that even Vanya pauses, then nods and turns around, returning to sitting on a folded up coat.

Luther is bustling about, busying himself by rearranging the logs on the fire and preparing to light it. Allison is watching him, occasionally holding up a piece of wood or kindling for him to take. Otherwise, she is dishing out the water in smaller tubs so that they can boil it for safety.

Diego stands up, walking over to her to help.

_“Dave?”_

He pauses, craning his neck to look at Klaus. His voice lifts up to something louder than a mutter of words mashed together, and Diego recognises the name. He says it often; begs for someone called Dave, has conversations with someone called Dave, smiles and cries over him. Diego has no idea who he is.

Klaus’ eyes are open and glossy. Diego wonders if he is sick; he wouldn’t be surprised. His eyes bounce around, never staying in one place for too long, never focusing on anything. One of his hands curled to his chest, the one not still clutching Diego’s knife, stretches out across the floor as if in search for something.

“Dave?” He repeats. “Dave? Where are you?”

He becomes increasingly more frantic; eyes snapping to and fro, hand scrambling over the floor, over stones, and it presses down. His eyes blow wide and he keens, an unfortunately familiar sound for Diego now, and Diego resists the urge to put his hands over his ears to try and block it out.

He tries, instead, to focus on helping Allison; taking tubs, filling it with water, doing it much slower than he has to. He tries to ignore the sound of Klaus’ panicked, spiralling gasping. He drops Diego’s knife in favour of shaking his hands, then curling them into his shirt as if it is suffocating him, and then he turns onto his stomach, clasping his hands over his ears, face pressed into the ground, and he _wails_.

Diego jumps. Allison spills water over her hand, and they both share a look; pained, heavy with despair.

Somehow, Diego thinks it is the most haunting sound Klaus has made yet.

Diego puts the water down and covers his ears.

###

“We have to do something.”

Klaus is laughing. High pitched, airy, sad laughs that spill like blood over his lips. His body twitches as if trying to escape pokes and prods, things that remind Diego of a man’s last moments; aborted movements made with the strength of a dying man.

“Like what?” Luther asks. There is a flash of anger in his expression before it gives way and he slumps, defeated. “What can we do?”

Diego’s hands curl into fists. “I don’t know,” he hisses. “I don’t know, but – we have to.” Had he been trying to sound firm, his voice fails him now. “We should have done something ages ago. I – I can’t. We have no fucking clue how long we’ll be here for – I can’t watch this any longer.”

“We can’t do anything else, Diego,” Luther says.

“We can’t even touch him,” Vanya murmurs, voice sad.

“I know,” Diego snaps, running a hand through his hair. God, does he know. “But – we need to see his head, he’s h-hurting himself.” He presses his lips together.

“We’d have to hold him down to try and look at it,” Luther mumbles. “We don’t have any medical supplies.”

“Five?” Diego calls. “Are there any places we can get that stuff from?”

Five grunts.

“ _Five_. Medical shit. Where can we get it?”

Five, finally, turns around. “What?” He snaps.

“Bandages and shit, Five,” Diego repeats, exasperated. “Where can we get them?”

Five purses his lips, eyes flicking onto the street. “Three streets down, there’s an old pharmacy. Part of it is still standing.”

“I’ll go,” Diego says. Luther stands.

“I’ll come.”

Allison stands. For a moment, Diego just stares at them. Then he nods, and he looks at Klaus and he can’t help but think that anything they do will be too little too late.

Nonetheless, the three of them turn and walk onto the streets.

###

“There are a few bandages we can still use,” Luther says, voice lifted from the opposite end of the crumbling room they are in. “Different kinds. There’s not much else, though. A bottle of antiseptic. Just grab whatever, I guess.”

The roll of bandages in his hands is covered in dust, but he brushes it off. It is still intact and would work well enough.

His eyes are stuck elsewhere, though.

Once, a long time ago, Klaus had crashed at his house. He had been more drunk than he had been high which resulted in a surprisingly depressed Klaus that was rarely seen. Hanging onto Diego as he deposited him on his couch and attempted to peel his jacket and shoes off, he had rambled on and on about drugs. Most of it hadn’t made any sense, too slurred and incoherent, but there had been one point that had stuck with him; _drugs make the ghosts quiet._

There must have been a shelf here, Diego thinks. Moving aside rubble and debris, there is a pile of broken plastic and glass bottles, pills scattered around and ground into dust. But, also, a few bottles intact. He picks them up, hears pills rattle inside. He stares at them, conflicted.

All of a sudden, he can understand why he did drugs, if they made _that_ disappear.

Just before he turns to follow Allison and Luther back, he gathers every intact bottle and stuffs them inside his pocket, and swallows down his nausea.

###

“So, you want to drug up our brother?”

Diego glares at Five.

“What do you mean, Diego?” Luther asks, staring accusingly at the bag full of pills. If Diego didn’t know better, he’d say that he feels the ex-addict whose secret stash has just been uncovered.

“I saw them, and I grabbed them,” Diego states. The entire walk back had been spent with his mind racing, full of thoughts about the pills; of Klaus, sprawled out on his couch, offering no help to Diego untying his shoe laces, and _drugs make them quiet, Diego, did you know it makes ‘em quiet?_

He curls his hand into a fist. He doesn’t know what else to do, but he knows that if he has to listen and watch Klaus like this for much longer, he won’t be able to handle it. He hardly is able to handle it now. And short of killing Klaus, Diego doesn’t know how else to truly help him.

It isn’t like he is giving him crack or heroin. Everything in the bag is prescription and came from the ruins of a pharmacy. He knows the way prescription meds can still be abused – had learned it all before he left the police academy – but, he tells himself this isn’t permanent. This isn’t meth, this isn’t really abusing it, he isn’t about to just hand his addict brother drugs.

“What for, then?” Five snaps, folding his arms over his chest. Diego sighs, eying the bottle by his feet.

“Look, listen. Ages ago, Klaus told me – he told me that the drugs and shit, it makes the ghosts quiet. You heard them when he manifested them. How else can we really help?”

His siblings all stare at him, faces twisted with conflict. Five presses his lips together, his eyes flick back to Klaus. _(Always muttering, if not screaming. “You know I like to dance, Dave, please, I’m not a murderer, leave me alone, please, Dad-“)_

Diego sighs, reaches down and swipes up one of the bottles. “We give him a few of these. They’re prescription, we don’t give him too much, and we wait and see. He said when he – he came back, they were quiet, and he felt better. If this makes them quiet, then he might calm down, and understand what’s going on. We can look over him, give him just enough that he’s alright until we go. That’s it. What – what else are we supposed to do?”

“We can’t just drug him,” Vanya says, and Diego grimaces slightly, looking away.

“No, no, he’s right,” Five says, lips pursed.

“What?”

“What else _can_ we do?” Five repeats. “If drugs get rid of the ghosts, then I think that is our only option to help Klaus now. Help him as much as we can now, anyway.”

Diego tries not to confront the implications of now.

He knows they have left it too long to just erase everything that has happened and bring Klaus back to normal. He knows that, even if the pills work and make the ghosts quiet or gets rid of them, or whatever, that they still don’t know the extent of his injuries and he doubts his obviously poor mental state will bounce back.

But it’s something, he tells himself.

“Either we try and it helps,” continues Five, “or we don’t try and nothing changes. Considering the state he is in now, I don’t see how doing this can cause him any more harm.” His eyes roll over everyone, one of his eyebrows raised questioningly.

Allison nods her agreement, her eyes boring into the pills in Diego’s hand. Luther sighs. “It’s the only option,” he mutters, looking away. Though Vanya certainly doesn’t look comfortable with this, she sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat, and nods her agreement.

“We can’t do anything worse by trying,” she says, and then adds; “but I don’t want to do it.”

“’s fine,” Diego says. “Fair enough.”

In a rare display, Five abandons his equations in favour of coming to Diego’s side. He swipes the pills from his hand, eying the label, and then he crouches and rifles through the other bottles with him, studying the label of each.

He takes the lid off one bottle and shakes a few pills onto his hand, then he tucks the bottle into his pocket. “We’ll use these ones first,” he says, and his lips remain parted with more words lingering on them, but his eyes burn into the pills resting in the palm of his hand. He inhales, swallows, wets his lips and looks up. “Luther, you’ll have to hold him down.”

Luther stills. “He – he looks fine just now.” And by fine, they all understand that to mean that he isn’t screaming and thrashing wildly. Five raises an eyebrow.

“And you know what happens when anyone touches him. I’ll give him the pills; Diego, hold his mouth open so he doesn’t bite me, and Luther, you will have to hold him down.”

Luther looks to Diego, and Diego stubbornly avoids looking at any of his siblings. It’s for the best, he knows.

“L-let’s just do it,” he mutters, and he grabs a nearby bottle of water, throwing it in Five’s direction, and the three of them approach Klaus. He’s twisted awkwardly, pressed against the wall, hands held to his chest and eyes open but unseeing, bouncing rapidly around as if watches bugs flying around him. His breathing is laboured, uneven and heavy.

“Luther,” Five says, jerking his head at Klaus. “Sit him up; I don’t want him to choke on this.”

Luther grunts his acknowledgement and he shuffles forwards, sits on his knees, and his hands hover over their brother, hesitant. Then he steels himself, reaches out and touches him. He places his hands onto his shoulders and begins to urge him off the floor.

Klaus flinches at the touch and his face pinches in confusion, then gives way swiftly to fear. His breath hitches in his throat and he shakes his head, tries to push himself through the wall to get away, and shoves blindly at Luther’s hands.

“No, no, no, please, no, no, stop, stop, please, _no_ – _no_ – _no_ -“

Luther’s hands encircle his wrists, holding his hands out of the way. He lifts him upright quickly, leaning him against the wall and keeping his hands out of the way. He shuffles to the side, letting Diego and Five come closer.

“Diego-“

“I know,” he grits out, and his hands reach out and cup Klaus’ jaw, holding his head still. He still thrashes, jerking as much as he can with Luther’s strength holding him in place, still tries to shake his head in Diego’s grip. His fingers pry Klaus’ stubborn jaw apart and with it unleashes a slurred stream of pleads and scared cries.

Five acts quickly; depositing the pills in his mouth and then washing them away with water, slow enough that Klaus doesn’t actually choke. He still gags and thrashes in protest, swallowing and trying to spit water out of his mouth. Diego forces his mouth closed, and he knows the comforting gesture of running his thumb along the stubble on his jaw is lost.

He is shaking so bad, eyes rolling back into his skull, and Diego genuinely worries that he’s having some kind of mini-seizure. He loosens his grip on his head, pleased to see both the pills and water gone from his mouth. Luther lets his own grip loosen too, only to catch him when Klaus’ falls forwards, unconscious, and he lays him down gently.

Diego sits back, hands shaking. “Fuck,” he hisses, scrubbing his hands down his face.

They all settle down and pretend to relax slightly, eased by Klaus’ quietness.

Five gets up, hovers for a moment, and then returns to his equations with a tired air to himself. Diego sits down on the floor, moving to lift Klaus’ head into his lap, brushing dust from his face and trying brush aside dried blood on his skin and from his hair.

His eyes burn into the rubble opposite him.

He feels exhausted.

###

He watches him stir and feels his guts twist with anticipation and anxiety. His body twitches, legs shuffling and hands shaking, and he begins to blink his eyes open and breathe heavier.

“Klaus? Are you awake?”

Everyone turns to look at him and, upon Klaus evidently waking up and not doing so with a sob or a scream. His eyebrows draw together and though he flinches slightly, he doesn’t react as violently as he has so far.

Five appears beside him in a flash. “Can you hear us? Klaus?”

Klaus opens his eyes, narrows them, and flinches back in Diego’s lap. “Hey,” he says, and goes to squeeze his shoulder but thinks better of it. “Hey, it’s us, Klaus.”

“Can you still see them?” Five inquires quickly, crouching in front of him. Everyone else has shuffled closer, too, though at least mindful of giving him a little more space.

“Five?”

“I’m right here,” says Five, voice a little softer. “Can you hear us alright?”

“Where are they?” Rasps Klaus, lifting his head and looking around. “Where – where are they?”

“Are the ghosts gone?”

“Klaus-“

“Ben?”

They pause, freeze automatically like they always do at the mention of Ben, even though they know, now, that Klaus can see him and that he is actually around. Klaus slumps in relief after a moment, sighing. Ben must be around.

“Klaus,” repeats Five, firmer this time. “The ghosts?”

“It’s quiet,” Klaus mumbles. Diego feels relief flood him icily and he lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. He sees everyone else visibly relax, too, looking a little victorious because Klaus is speaking to them, listening to them, and the ghosts are _gone_ -

“Are you okay?” Diego asks, and this time he does squeeze his shoulder. Klaus still flinches, tense and uncomfortable, but not afraid.

“He’s got a concussion; look at his eyes,” says Five, and Diego leans closer, as does everyone else. Klaus’ eyes are constantly shooting around the place, erratic and uncontrollable, but they all knew that a concussion was definite. “But after everything he’s been doing to his head, that was obvious.” Five leans forwards, tapping Klaus’ cheek. “Klaus, follow my finger.”

Klaus blinks. His eyes bounce to the left and he twitches, wriggles slightly. Five sighs, nudging his shoulder.

“ _Klaus_ , follow my-“

“I can’t see.”

The words fall flat off Klaus’ lips; hollow and rasped in a croaky whisper, throat strained, and they send icy water through Diego’s veins.

“What?”

“I can’t see,” Klaus repeats, voice empty and uncaring. His eyelids flutter closed and his head rests once more on Diego’s lap. “I’m tired,” he whines, and it reminds Diego of the times they would pull all-nighters when they were young and they would sneak out to Griddy’s and after stuffing his face, he would complain about wanting a nap until they got back. He sounds young and utterly oblivious to everything that has happened to him. Something painful within Diego twists.

Cursing, Five tries to tap his cheeks and force him to open his eyes; “you need to stay awake Klaus, fuck,” he mutters, thumb running along his forehead.

“W-what do you mean?” Diego asks, squeezes his shoulder more firmly and then resting it on his cheek. “Klaus?”

The words and their gravity don’t quite click in his mind yet; everything seems to be going slow, as if the world has frozen and come to a standstill.

“’s okay,” Klaus mumbles, body melting into the floor. “They’re gone now.” His lips, impossibly, twitch upwards into a smile, and he lets out something like a sigh of relief. Five continues to prod his cheeks, moving his limp head and cursing at him, but Klaus is already completely out of it again.

Five lets his head rest on Diego’s legs and restrains from slamming his fist into the wall, choosing to run it through his hair stressfully instead, hissing air between his teeth.

Allison’s fingertips shake as she reaches them out to ghost gently over Klaus’ cheek. Vanya’s face is hidden behind her hands, shoulders high and tense, and Diego just blinks, staring up at the cloudy sky hanging overhead.

He wonders if there is some kind of higher power out there, and he wonders what they might possibly have against Klaus.

His hand runs through his brother’s hair, something he thinks is probably more of a comforting gesture towards himself than Klaus at the moment, and all of a sudden he can’t get that longing expression on Klaus’ face when he had spoken about being dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m unsatisfied with this chapter but let me know your thoughts!


	8. taken by sleep

“Wake him up,” Five demands. “Wake him up right now.”

“Five-”

“Wake him up,” Five repeats, voice cold, and he comes to crouch beside Klaus, reaching forwards to grab his shoulders and shake him.

“Five, relax-”

“We just drugged a man with brain damage,” Five hisses, eyes narrowed, daring anyone to tell him to back up again.

“What?” Vanya asks, hovering nearby and wringing her hands. Five grabs Klaus’ shoulders and forces him upright, holding him when he slumps, boneless. One hand moves to his face, roughly rubbing his cheek.

“He can’t see,” Five repeats. “He’s hit the back of his head hard enough that it has fucked up his sight in one way or another.” His thumb peels one of Klaus’ eyelids back to study it before letting it drop closed again. He taps his cheek forcefully, just short of actually slapping him. Klaus’ face twists and he moans, trying to wriggle away from him, but Five keeps a firm grip on his jaw. Diego reaches out to hold him upright by his shoulders.

“Come on, Klaus, open your eyes,” Five says, lifting his head. Klaus mumbles something, words too heavy and slurred to make sense. Five hits his cheek again. As if they weigh a ton, Klaus peels his eyelids open slowly.

“Five?” He mumbles.

“Right here,” he says. “But you have to stay awake Klaus, alright?”

Klaus blinks. He slumps. “’m tired, Five,” he croaks, and Five freezes momentarily, thrown both by the tone of his brother’s voice and the young look on his face.

“I know, Klaus,” he says. “Can you tell me where you are?”

Klaus blinks. He shrugs.

“What do you know, Klaus? What do you remember?”

He blinks. “It’s quiet,” he murmurs, eyes flicking around the place. “And dark. I’m dead?”

“You’re not dead, Klaus,” says Five. “We’re in the Apocalypse, remember? We time travelled after the Icarus Theatre into the Apocalypse. Everyone’s here.”

Klaus keeps looking around, and then his eyes jump sharply to the left. “Oh,” he breathes, and then he nods. “Yeah, yeah. I’m tired.”

“I know,” Five repeats. “But you’re hurt. We need to look over your injuries.”

Klaus’ eyelids droop briefly and he doesn’t reply for several long moments. His head turns slightly to the left as if listening to something, and then he nods.

“Do you think you could eat something?”

Klaus’ breath shudders. He shrugs. Five turns to look at everyone. “One of you go heat something up on the fire, we’ll try and get him to eat something while we can.”

Vanya, closest to their stash of food, grabs a can and then heads to the fire with it.

“We need to take him out to the back and wash him,” Five continues. “And we’ll look at his wounds.”

He stands, and Diego squeezes Klaus’ shoulder. “Come on, bro,” he urges, standing up and taking his hands. “You need to stand up.”

Klaus’ tilts his head up to follow the sound of his voice, staring at him with wide, sad eyes. Diego squeezes his hands, tugging him up gently, and manages to coax Klaus upright. He sways, stumbling and almost falling, and Diego hurries to wrap an arm around his waist. Klaus flinches, body going tense, and his hands reach for the necklace hanging from his neck.

“Come on,” Diego utters, coaxing him forwards. It is a slow shuffle, Klaus often pitching this way and that as if he is walking on ice, and he walks with a limp and trips over rubble he can’t see. Diego does his best to kick rocks out of his path or steers him out of the way.

Then he urges Klaus to sit down on a large piece of rubble, one hand remaining on his shoulder. Luther comes out carrying a bucket of water and Five follows with the bandages.

“Klaus,” Diego says, and Klaus’ head turns slightly in his direction. “You need to take your shirt off.”

Klaus blinks at him, then looks down. His hands remain clutching his necklace, face stuck in a dazed expression. He starts dipping forwards and Diego holds him up, squeezes his shoulder to force his eyes open. With a sigh, he says; “I’m going to take your shirt off, alright?”

His head inclines, barely noticeable, and with hesitant, awkward fingers Diego fumbles to pinch the hem of his dirt shirt and tug it upwards. He has to pry Klaus’ fingers from around his necklace so that he can manoeuvre his arm through the shirt and then tug it over his head, discarding the ruined rags on the floor.

Five sits on Klaus’ other side. A bucket sits at both his and Diego’s feet, a torn piece of cloth perched on the edge, and the both of them lean forwards, dip it in the water, and silently start to try and gently wash away caked blood and dirt from his skin.

Diego tries not to let his eyes linger on his body too long, lest he feel nauseous. His ribs push against bruised skin with each breath, prominent, too prominent, and there are scratches and gouges that cover almost every inch of exposed skin.

Klaus remains unresponsive for the most part. His eyes remain open, blinking sluggishly, and unless someone moves him then he just remains limp, slouching over. He flinches at each touch and he trembles continuously, but he never looks at anyone and he doesn’t say anything.

Diego turns to eye the blood in his hair. He cups his cheek to tilt his head and Klaus flinches, makes a quiet, half-hearted noise.

“It’s just me, bro,” Diego murmurs. “It’s just me.”

Klaus doesn’t so much as relax as he simply slumps a little more. He lets Diego’s fingers prod at his head, trying to clean the blood from his hair so that he can get to the wound hidden beneath. His fingers dance close to it and Klaus twitches, whines in pitiful protest.

“Is Ben around, Klaus?” Diego asks, attempting to distract him. “Klaus?”

Klaus swallows, taking a moment to control his mouth. “Yeah,” he says. The hand that Luther is holding and starting to bandage twitches, finger pointing vaguely in front of them all. “He’s there. He’s talking.”

“What’s he saying?” Diego asks. He cleans the rag in the water, ignoring how pink it shimmers with Klaus’ blood staining it, and brings it back up to the back of his head.

Klaus shrugs one of his shoulders. “He’s just... explaining. You’re helping. I have to – to listen to you. It’s hard.”

“Yeah, well, you know Ben is always right,” Diego comments. Klaus’ lips twitch upwards briefly, eyes slipping closed.

“Yeah, I know.”

He peels his eyes back open, continues to stare blindly ahead. It takes a while, but Diego manages to clean the majority of the blood from his hair to reveal a nasty gash that makes Klaus jerk every time his fingers get too close to it. The sight of it doesn’t surprise him.

“Do you think there are any stitches anywhere?” Diego asks in a murmur, frowning.

“Not close,” utters Five, winding bandages around his arm with expertise. “And I don’t want Klaus unconscious or drugged more than he is now.”

Diego grunts his acknowledgement. Done with his arms, he turns to his legs. They’re more covered, the wounds mainly sticking to his ankles and calves or right by his hips where the ghosts could get to him when his shirt moved.

Like bracelets around his ankles are bruises, dark and painful looking, in the shapes of many, many fingers. They match the worst bruises around his wrists and his neck, places that had evidently been used to hold him down.

Diego swallows, tries to ignore the sound of thousands of screams echoing in his head, and cleans the cuts.

Five and Luther manoeuvre Klaus into a new shirt, loose and oversized, hanging off his shoulders and not clinging to his bruised and cut skin.

By the time they are done with him, the two buckets of clean water they had just gotten are now tinged red, and from the palms of his hands to his shoulders on both arms are hidden beneath bandages, a pitiful attempt to help keep them clean, though Diego really won’t be surprised if Klaus ends up coming down with a fever on top of all of this.

“I can go get us more water,” Luther offers, staring at the two tainted buckets. Five waves a hand dismissively.

“No point now, it’s too late,” he states.

Vanya and Allison shuffles over to them, Vanya holding a warmed tin of spaghetti hoops. She crouches in front of Klaus, mulling over her words. “Hey, Klaus,” she murmurs, voice gentle. Klaus blinks and lifts his head, tilting it in her direction.

“Vanya… Vanya. Hi, Vanya.”

Vanya offers a gentle smile. “I have food for you – you need to eat,” she tells him. Klaus’ nose twitches and he tips his head to the side, sighing.

“I’m-“ He pauses, eyebrows knitting together and head turning elsewhere, in the direction of where he had said Ben was. “Oh. Okay.”

Awkwardly, he lifts one of his shaky hands until Vanya leans forwards, covering the back of it with one of her own – and Klaus flinches, withdrawing his hand slightly before muttering to himself, quick, sharp things beneath his breath, and he forces his hand back out to Vanya – and then she sets the tin in his hand, waiting until his fingers curl around it and hold it up to let go. She reaches for his other hand, slipping in it one of the tin lids twisted into a mockery of cutlery.

Klaus holds both of them, his elbows resting on his thighs. He blinks.

Diego reaches forwards, gently taking his wrist and coaxing one hand to the other. “You gotta eat something, bro,” he says. Klaus blinks.

“Right.” Even then, it takes him several moments to find the energy to fumble with the makeshift spoon, taking a small amount of food on it. Most falls off and back into the tin or splatters onto the floor, Klaus’ hand too unsteady to hold it properly, and with his lack of sight it doesn’t make it any easier either. He eats as if he isn’t sure of what he’s doing or how to actually do it. He manages to do it a couple more times and then his hand goes down and doesn’t come back up, and he continues to stare blankly ahead of himself.

With a sigh, Diego takes both items from him. He scoops some hoops up, then taps Klaus’ cheek. “Open your mouth,” he says. Klaus does, and then they fall into the rhythmic regime of Diego feeding him. He gets through about half of the tin before Klaus refuses to open his mouth again, shaking his head.

He still ate something though, so Diego is happy enough with it, and he sets the rest aside.

“How do you feel?” Five asks, still scrutinising Klaus carefully. Klaus’ eyes flit briefly in his direction.

“I’m tired,” he murmurs. Five presses his lips, looking away guiltily.

“Right,” he utters, and then he disappears in a flash of blue, returning to his equations.

Luther helps Klaus rise to his feet and they shuffle back into the camp, letting Klaus sit down next to the crackling fire. Klaus hardly reacts; shuffling on autopilot, walking when urged to do so, sitting when told to do so, responding shortly to questions, flinches and twitching.

His hands clutch the necklace he’s wearing like some kind of anchor, his thumb running back and forth over the metal. He seems only slightly more aware than he was previously, struggling to keep up with anyone talking to him and, Diego thinks, not entirely understanding where they are and what has been happening, or the gravity of it all.

Sitting down, Diego eyes his brother and sighs. Then, turning to Vanya all of a sudden and standing up, he says, “come on, we’re gonna go train.”

Vanya raises her eyebrows, startled, but finally she nods and gets up. They both walk out of the camp and Diego leads the way down the street, putting some distance between them and their siblings.

“I, uh, thought Five had kind of put this on pause,” Vanya murmurs awkwardly. Diego shrugs.

“He’s obsessed with figuring out the way back home,” he says. “And fair enough, I think it’s our priority we get out of here.”

Vanya nods her head and then falls quiet again.

Diego’s feelings towards Vanya are still conflicting. The anger and hurt from her book still resides within him, makes his chest tight with anger. It is still hard to look at her and not hear her words echo in his ears. He isn’t entirely comfortable being alone with her and he knows she doesn’t feel comfortable alone with him either. Still, Diego understands that she is struggling with her powers, and he needs a distraction from Klaus. He feels like he’s teetering precariously on the edge of a breakdown.

He and Vanya put a fair amount of distance between them and the others, and then Diego stops, turns to Vanya, and nods.

###

He realises he knows nothing about Vanya’s powers.

Five is probably the best to train her, because Diego both doesn’t understand her powers nor does his own relate similarly to hers.

Sighing and running her hand through her hair, Vanya turns to Diego. “I don’t think this is working,” she says.

“No, no, look, just – just try again,” Diego says. He scrubs a hand down his face, letting out a sigh. “How did Five even do this? There’s sound – can’t you focus on that?”

“I just can’t focus right now,” Vanya states. “I’m sorry. We should just go back.”

“No, look, let’s try it once more,” Diego insists, but Vanya shakes her head, frowning.

“I’m sorry, Diego,” she says, and he sighs, slumping. He nods, picks up the bottle of water he brought with him, and gestures for Vanya to guide the way back to camp. They fall into step together quietly, not quite an awkward silence between them for once, broken only by the crunch of stone beneath their feet.

Eventually, Vanya speaks up. “Do you think… do you think we’re really helping Klaus?”

Diego pauses, tensing, and he keeps his gaze determinedly forwards. His grip on his bottle of water tightens and he toys with his bottom lip. “Yes,” he finally settles on saying.

“Do you really believe that?” Asks Vanya, voice quiet. Diego lets his gaze slip over to her briefly, and he sighs.

“We should have gone to that pharmacy long ago,” he mutters, pursing his lips. “Should have acted quicker. There’s nothing we can do now except for wait for Five so we can leave.”

Vanya looks down, falling quiet for a while. “Do you think this is my fault?” She asks. Diego stops in his steps, turning to look at her with narrowed eyes.

“What?”

Vanya sighs, avoiding his gaze, and she waves one hand around them in a vague gesture. “This. I – I did this. I – killed everyone, and made them ghosts. It’s my fault that he’s struggling.”

Diego’s gaze lingers on her and he sighs, looks forwards again. “Yeah, well, not like you did this on purpose or like you knew what would happen. None of us knew what the ghosts were like,” he states. “We just need to wait for Five.” He says it with more confidence than he really feels. He knows, deep down, that whether or not Five figures out how to get them back home within this hour or tomorrow, it will be too late. It has been too late for a while now.

But he doesn’t know what else they can do if Klaus doesn’t get better. If they go back in time and Klaus is too far gone, too injured, too traumatised. What then? What can they do then?

Diego doesn’t let himself think about that. Five will get them home and Klaus will be fine. It will work out in the end.

“Right,” Vanya murmurs, sounding as unconvinced as he feels, and they continue back to camp in a much more tense quietness.

They had spent a while away from the camp, long enough to let some of his tension and stress over Klaus melt, allowing him a brief reprieve. He doesn’t necessarily feel any more equipped or ready to deal with his brother, instead just feeling stuck in hopelessness and he finds very little motivation to look at Klaus and try to talk to him, or get him to eat or drink. He almost wishes Klaus wasn’t there entirely so that he wouldn’t have to worry about him. He feels guilty for it, especially when his brother obviously needs help, but he simply feels so exhausted.

Stepping into the camp, he avoids looking at Klaus, instead going straight to the food and picking up a can despite having little appetite.

He focuses on it, ignores the sound of stone shifting and cracking, ignores the laboured breathing that is obviously Klaus’. He sits down, staring into the can in his hand, lips pursed. Slate digs into stone as Five drags it across the wall to scratch equations into it.

He dares to look at Klaus. He can’t keep his gaze away from him forever and he steals a glance guiltily, as if looking at him is a crime. He is sat near Five, leaning against the wall, arms wrapped around himself. His head continuously drops forwards only for him to snap it up again. His chest rises and falls unsteadily with each ragged, loud breath, and his face twitches occasionally.

Diego sets aside his food and forgets about it.

No one talks for a long time. Stuff is thrown onto the fire, glances are cast about, everyone hovering awkwardly, waiting for someone to break the silence but unwilling to be the person to do it.

Surprisingly, when the silence is broken, it is broken by Klaus.

His breath hitches and he twitches. Diego fears that what they have given him is wearing off and he’s flinching away from the sound of ghosts again. He watches his brother carefully, eyes occasionally bouncing between him and the little bottles of pills, tempted to give him more as long as it means he won’t start screaming again, but then Klaus outstretches a hand weakly, his shoulders relax, and he smiles slightly, in such a genuine way Diego doesn’t think he has seen it on his brother’s face since they were thirteen.

“Dave?” He says, forcing his eyes open and looking around, though his eyes still never focus on anything. “Dave? Dave, I – I missed you so much,” he murmurs, body slumping in relief. He drops his hand against his chest, sighs happily, and leans against the wall, tilting his head to the side. His lips move continuously but whatever it is he is saying isn’t loud enough for Diego to make out, other than that same name being repeated. His hand twitches, itching to reach out for something, or perhaps someone, whoever Dave is, and that same smile never leaves his face.

Diego blinks and looks away. He isn’t sure whether he hopes this Dave is a friendly ghost or a hallucination. Both would mean bad things – if he is hearing the ghosts again, or if he is injured and exhausted enough to start hallucinating, but it seems to only bring him comfort.

Diego doesn’t have the heart to dare to take it away from him, ghost or hallucination. He almost wishes it might be the last thing he hears, if it means it is something nice.

Diego bites his lip and stares down at his hands for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to let me know what you thought! <3


	9. the dark isn't taking prisoners tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, enjoy!

“Klaus-“

“Dave?”

His brother blinks up at him with wide, hopeful eyes, and for the first time since the incident, he doesn’t flinch when Diego touches him. Instead, he leans into his touch and smiles. “It’s dark, Dave, can we go inside?”

“It’s me, bro,” he says, voice sad. “Diego.”

Klaus blinks, smile faltering as he struggles to understand what’s going on, and then his face falls. “Oh,” he breathes, and looks down. “Hi. Where’s Dave?”

Diego opens his mouth to reply, to tell him that there is no Dave, but then he freezes. He thinks about the smile on his face, the way his whole body had relaxed, all tension melting out of his muscles. He stares at his confused face now, more open and vulnerable than he thinks he has ever seen Klaus before.

He squeezes his brother’s shoulder and quietly, so quietly, he says; “he’ll be back soon, Klaus.”

Evidently, it must have been the right thing to say, because Klaus’ shoulders slump and he exhales in relief, smiling. “Oh, okay. That’s fine. I miss him.”

Feeling awkward, Diego looks down at the bottle of water in his hands. “How are you feeling? Do you need something to drink, or eat?”

Klaus shakes his head, listing to the side and slumping slightly against the wall. “No, no. I’ll wait for Dave; we’ll go out.”

Diego frowns at his brother, watches him wrap his arms around himself and close his eyes. With a sigh, he sits down opposite him, crossing his legs. “You’ve never spoken about Dave before,” he says. Klaus quirks an eyebrow, lifting his head slightly. “What’s he like?”

His brother’s face lights up. Diego can’t remember the last time he saw Klaus smile like that, if ever.

“He’s so nice!” He exclaims, voice soft, eyes going distant. “He was the first one to talk to me on the bus, and his smile was so nice. His name’s Dave. His hair curls when it’s hot, and it is always hot, so he has curly hair. Or – maybe it’s because it’s humid, I think. I like it like that. He’s so nice. You’d like him,” Klaus hums, and it looks as if he is suddenly full of energy, as if his body doesn’t ache like it surely must and his head isn’t pounding like it should be.

“He – he’s so beautiful,” Klaus says, voice softening slightly, and he closes his eyes, rests his cheek on his hands. “And so good, and strong. He’s so nice to me. I miss him – he knows I don’t like being alone, he’ll come back. He taught me how to shoot! And stargaze! He’s so smart.” He lifts his head, tilting it vaguely in Diego’s direction, and then he smiles. “I love him, Diego. And he loves me. And he – he should be coming back, soon. He’ll be back – he’s out – he-“ His face twists suddenly, smile dropping and eyebrows furrowing.

“Klaus?” Diego says, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “You good?”

Klaus blinks. He looks up, frowning slightly, then he smiles; a wobbly thing. “Yeah, I just – he’s coming back. I thought-“ He laughs, afraid and insecure. “I thought he was – he was _dead_ , I – it must have been a nightmare,” he says, speaking now more to himself than Diego. He shakes his head, curling his hands around his necklace, and then he smiles stubbornly. “He’ll be back, he’ll be back. You can meet him! He’s so nice.”

Diego frowns at his brother, stomach dropping. So Dave must be real, must be someone he met at some point, but perhaps he has seen his ghost in amongst the crowd earlier and knows he’s dead now. Diego looks back over his shoulders to his siblings, watching Klaus with a sad expression.

He turns back to Klaus, looking troubled now, and he squeezes his shoulder. “He’ll come back,” he tells him despite how the words taste bitter in his mouth, heavy with lies. But Klaus perks up, smiling softly, and nods his head.

“He will!” He agrees enthusiastically. “He will, he will. He wouldn’t leave me, he loves me.” He turns his head away from Diego, resting his chin on his knees and running his fingers along his necklace, eyes slipping closed. Diego pulls his hand back to himself, frowning at his brother, and he stands upright, turning from him and returning to his other siblings. He settles himself onto a piece of rubble, twists the cap off his water and takes a sip.

“He never mentioned a Dave,” Vanya murmurs. Diego shakes his head.

“Never heard of him before. There’s a lot about him we don’t know, I guess,” he says, and he dares to look at Klaus again, watching his lips move in quiet mutters, thumb running and back and forth over his necklace that he holds close to his face. He wonders if Dave got him it; he seems to turn to it whenever he is distressed.

Diego really hopes Klaus didn’t see him in that crowd of ghosts. He really hopes he didn’t die in the fiery mess that was the end of the world. He isn’t sure whether or not he hopes Klaus finds him again.

###

“Dave?”

“Me again,” Diego says, and Klaus’ face falls painfully. “Come on, you need to eat.”

Klaus looks down to the floor, frowning, lips ghosts over his pale, tense knuckles. He shakes his head. “I – I’m tired, Diego,” he says, voice quiet. There is dirt on his forehead from where he’d been resting it against the wall.

“I know,” Diego says softly, “but you need to eat, Klaus.”

“I’m tired,” Klaus echoes, turning his head away from him, blinking lethargically. “I’m – I’m just waiting for Dave. He’ll come soon. I’m waiting for him.”

Diego sighs, looks down at the food in his hand and back up at Klaus. He feels hopeless trying to help him; nothing works. Klaus’ poor grasp on reality at the moment is stressful and he doesn’t know how to help; he just wishes his brother would be perfectly fine, although he knows that isn’t how it will work.

“Should we check his wounds?” Vanya says, coming a little closer, and Diego startles. His eyes fall back onto Klaus and his bandages arms, the blood soaking through at some patches, the dust gathering on the bandages.

“Have we got enough bandages to redo it?” He asks, and Vanya looks down.

“Maybe not for all of it,” she admits, and Diego sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face and the stubble that has been growing out since they arrived.

He looks back at Klaus. His face is screwed up, pressed into his knees, and his shoulders tremble minutely. He wonders what he might be thinking. He probably doesn’t want to know.

###

“Is he-“

“I think he’s crying.”

Diego looks up, straining his ears to listen as he watches Klaus. He is shaking harder than before and, sure enough, Diego can hear quiet sniffling coming from him. He shares a concerned look with his siblings (save Five, who has not spoken to them since bandaging Klaus up, favouring his equations) and shuffles a little closer to his brother.

“Please,” mutters Klaus, so quiet he almost doesn’t catch it. “Please, please, no – Dave, please come back, please. It was a nightmare, yeah? Where are you? Please, Dave, I need you, I need you, don’t – _please_ -“

He chokes on a sob, rocking slightly as he sits. He drops his necklace, hands lifting to flex his fingers and shake them out in the air as if there is something on them, and he keens; a high sound reverberating in his throat, pained and sad. His shaking fingers run through his hair, back and forth, back and forth, and stones crunch beneath him as he rocks himself for comfort.

One of his hands come down to clamp over his mouth and he shakes his head. “Please, Dave – it isn’t – it isn’t real, that didn’t happen, I – please, _no_ ,” he sobs, and his face screws up. His hand muffles his sobs though they progressively get louder, wracking his entire body with tremors, until he is wailing.

“Klaus?” Vanya says, coming close with Allison, who squeezes his shoulder, only for their brother to flinch away from them and cry louder, ignoring Vanya’s attempts to offer verbal comfort.

“No,” he cries out, moaning weakly. “I don’t – no, no-“

Allison takes Klaus’ hands, holding them together to stop them from tugging his hair, her only attempt at offering comfort when she can’t speak, and Diego rests a hand on Klaus’ shoulders.

“Klaus – Klaus, what’s wrong?” He asks, raising his voice over Klaus’ crying. At the question, though, Klaus tips his head back, sobbing loudly.

“He’s – he’s dead! Dave’s dead, he’s dead, he isn’t coming back – he – he-“ He trails off, wailing horrifically and doubling in on himself. “I couldn’t – couldn’t stop it, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help you-“ He sucks in a breath, chokes on it, and sobs. “He isn’t coming back,” he says, and he cries loudly, uncontrollable, and Allison strokes his back although the motion goes unnoticed by him.

He simply wails horrifically, sounding as if he himself is in pain, and Diego doesn’t know what to do. He stumbles backwards, letting Allison try and fail to comfort him.

###

“Klaus?”

Diego pats his cheek lightly. His eyes open slowly, heavily, and his face remains devoid of any emotion besides hopelessness; stuck in a glazed expression.

“Can you sit up for me?”

Klaus blinks. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and his head rests back down on the ground. “I’m tired,” he croaks, voice rough. Diego falters at the way he says it this time, unlike before; obviously more than just physically tired, but completely exhausted; physically, mentally and emotionally. His eyelids flutter and fall closed, body slumping. Tear tracks scar his hollow cheeks and he exhales heavily.

“I know,” he murmurs, feeling as if he is talking to a corpse. Klaus doesn’t react as he sits down beside him, nor as he hesitantly, fearfully, reaches out to take one of his hands in a desperate attempt to make Klaus do something.

His hand doesn’t so much as twitch.

###

He prefers this Klaus over the one screaming and delirious, but the glazed look to Klaus’ eyes now, devoid of any emotion, including fear, and devoid of any kind of recognition or understanding, is something that disturbs Diego.

He understands what is being said to him when he is spoken to, but he doesn’t seem to know where he is, or when, or what is going on with the Apocalypse or Vanya, or what happened with the ghosts.

There has not been a single sign of the same Klaus since he shot himself. He does not feel like Klaus ever really came back to life; came back to them the same Klaus.

He cannot help but look at Klaus and feel the need to mourn. Now, he simply lays on the floor, not quite asleep but not with reality, stuck in a haze of drugs that keep his monsters at bay but dull him down, and Diego isn’t sure whether or not he is ever truly aware of how different he is now, or if he is and if he still thinks back to Five’s gun longingly.

He isn’t sure he wants to know the answer to that.

###

Allison has just gotten up to heat some food up when Five’s breath hitches. Their brother freezes, fingers tense over his piece of slate that serves as a makeshift piece of chalk, and his eyes wildly roam over the mess of equations in front of him. He narrows his eyes at it, looks over it again and again, and then he hurries to scribble something down hastily, crossing one part out. Then, throwing aside his piece of slate and whirling around to face his siblings, staring at him with shocked expressions, he says; “I’ve got it.”

Their reactions are delayed, but then they all shoot up, dropping whatever they are holding.

“We can go back now?” Luther asks, and Five nods.

“We can go back. I can get us back now – around the Apocalypse week, hopefully.”

Luther’s eyes roam over everyone and Diego reaches for his knife harness, tugging it on with ease. “What are we waiting for?” He asks rhetorically. “Let’s go – I’ll get Klaus,” he says, and the words taste like ash on his tongue as he turns to his brother. He is curled up on his side, back to the wall, and his eyes are half-open and staring blindly ahead. His breathing is laboured and he twitches occasionally, his body shakes, and he blinks. Slow, heavy, exhausted.

Diego gets only a few steps closer to him.

“Wait,” says Five, and he freezes on the spot, turning to look at him. All eyes turn on Five, his skin pale, his eyes lined by shadows. “I… I think that I can fix him, too.”

Diego blinks. “What?”

“What do you mean?” Vanya asks, and Five raises a hand to disperse their questions.

“I can fix him. Travelling back in time, I’ll be replacing our consciousness in the original timeline. That won’t matter much to us; we’ll remember everything that has happened even though, technically, it hasn’t happened yet,” he says, and Diego shares a look with Luther.

“What does that mean, Five?” Asks Luther, and Five huffs, irritated.

“I can hardly make that any simpler – when I came back, my consciousness was fifty-eight, but my body thirteen. I still remember and experienced everything that happened, even if my body hadn’t – technically it had never happened in the first place on that timeline. But my consciousness is from a different timeline. If I didn’t bring you back and went back in time myself, your consciousness as it is now wouldn’t exist. You wouldn’t have experienced this; you wouldn’t know Vanya has powers, or what would happen at the Icarus Theatre, or who Harold Jenkins was, because it hasn’t happened yet for you. I’m transporting our consciousness, not our bodies back.”

“What are you saying, then? How does that help Klaus?” Diego asks, eyebrows furrowing. Five heaves a breath, eyes on Klaus.

“If we go back in time, we’ll know how the rest of the week plans out. We know exactly what happens, when it happens, why it happens. We’ll know about this. We can stop it all from happening. If I… if I don’t bring Klaus back with us, he never would have come here. He never would have experienced the Apocalypse, he never would have seen or heard of these ghosts, he wouldn’t have killed himself, or manifested the ghosts and been attacked. He would be fine.”

Silence stretches out for several moments, echoing around them.

“So,” says Diego, voice low. “You’re implying that we leave Klaus here, like that-“ He waves to their brother, looking half-dead, nearly comatose on the floor, bandaged and trembling. “Five, we can’t-“

“We wouldn’t be leaving him here,” Five snaps, “because he never would have come here in the first place. Diego, if we bring back Klaus, I can’t promise he’ll get any better whether or not he’s at the Academy. He has brain damage and he can’t see – I don’t know if that’s permanent or not. He’s malnourished and if he doesn’t eat by himself soon, he’d have to have Grace monitoring everything he eats, and he might not even physically eat it if he can’t; Grace would have to put him on a feeding tube. He’ll go through withdrawals that he probably can’t go through now, and so we’d have to keep him drugged. He’s traumatised. You’re not going to get a coherent conversation out of him, Diego. If we take him back, the chance is, nothing will change. This is a chance to stop this from ever happening.”

Diego pauses, lips moving over silent words as he processes what Five said. He turns to look at Klaus, watches his chest rise and fall. He is completely oblivious to what’s going on. He has no idea that they are discussing the matter of his own life.

“Five-“ Diego says, then chokes off. “Five, we can’t just – just l-leave him.”

Five stares at Diego, eyes cold, then he deflates. “I know,” he says. “I know, Diego. But we aren’t killing him, we aren’t abandoning him. He won’t be stuck here forever. He’ll be at home, and he’ll be fine.”

“I think it’s for the best,” says Vanya, voice quiet and not entirely steady as she says this. “It’d help him.”

“He wouldn’t know about Vanya,” Luther points out. “He wouldn’t know that she has powers, or that we averted the Apocalypse, or that we time travelled.”

Five presses his lips together. “We could tell him he forgot,” he finally says after a moment’s thought. “He was with us and in travelling back to the original timeline, it must have messed with his memories, or his consciousness joined with his original one rather than replacing it. We fill him in and move on.”

The siblings all share conflicted expressions, but then Allison nods, and so does Vanya, and then Luther agrees.

“There isn’t gonna be a timeline where he’s still here?” He asks Five. “There isn’t going to be a version of Klaus stuck here, alone, forever?”

Five presses his lips together, expression going cold. “Not for us,” he says. Diego inhales, curses the not-answer and turns to look at Klaus. Then he walks towards the pills, grabs some water, and goes to Klaus’ side, crouching down. He places the bottles within his reach, shakes some out onto his palm, then shakes Klaus’ shoulder with his other hand.

“Hey, bro,” he says, watching his eyes roll lazily before going up in his vague direction. He blinks and they remain unfocused, staring straight through Diego, dull and empty.

Klaus swallows dryly, croaks out; “Diego?”

He smiles sadly. His hands shakes. “Right here,” he says, and he shimmies one arm beneath Klaus slowly, urging him upwards. “I need you to drink something, okay?” He says. Klaus blinks at him, frowning, hardly helping leverage himself upright. He complies when Diego nudges his mouth open to deposit pills on his tongue, and then he hastily swallows the water down, taking with it the medication, and some water runs down his chin as he coughs. His face pinches in discomfort and he tries to lay back down, but Diego holds him up, forcing him to lean against him instead.

“Diego-“

“I’m right here,” Diego murmurs, voice hoarse slightly. He can’t help but feel like he’s killing Klaus now, and he knows he has previously considered actually doing so, but here it is happening. He is about to leave Klaus, vulnerable and injured and afraid. Will he exist here forever, even if they go back and Klaus is there, fine as ever? Will there always be his brother laying on this floor, blinded by himself, drugged up until they wear off? He won’t find the pills, or the water. He won’t eat. The fire will go out, and the ghosts will return, and Klaus will scream and cry and hit his head until it cracks open only to come back and repeat it, a vicious, endless cycle. Will he ever realise Diego broke his promise and left him?

His eyes burn and he knows that Klaus doesn’t even understand why Diego is holding him. He inhales shakily, tightens his grip on his brother who blinks blindly up at him, one hand fumbling around before resting on his arm. “I’m so tired, Diego,” Klaus mumbles, voice breathy, and Diego screws his eyes shut as they sting.

“I-I know,” he stammers. “I know, K-Klaus.” He lifts a hand, moving his dirty hair from his face slightly, and watches the way Klaus’ eyes flutter and that glossy look never leaves his face. For a quick, brief moment, he holds him tighter, close enough that his head rests against Klaus’ shoulder and Klaus’ head rests on his shoulder, enough to make Klaus curl his fingers in Diego’s jumper slightly, and the movement feels like the first real thing Klaus has done in a while. Reluctantly, he pulls back, lowering Klaus to the floor, and then he reaches aside for a spare jumper and folds it up, placing it beneath his head. “You – you can rest now, Klaus. Get – get some r-rest, alright?”

Klaus blinks, fingers twitching in Diego’s hand. He swallows, nods his head slightly, and his eyelids fall closed. His fingers curl weakly around Diego’s for a moment and Diego squeezes his hand.

He looks up at the sound of his siblings coming close, and then they are all kneeling down, and Allison and Vanya reach out to touch Klaus; squeezing his hand or his arm or his shoulder, stroking his cheek and moving his hair. The new touches force Klaus’ eyes to open once more and he looks around, lost, but he does not flinch away. He sighs, body seeming to relax at the gentle touches, and his eyes close once more; more relaxed.

“It’s for his own good,” Five murmurs. “He’ll be alright, Diego.”

He can’t take his eyes away from his brother’s gaunt face, his shadowed eyes. He forces himself to nod. “I know,” he croaks, and then he squeezes Klaus’ hand and forces himself to let go. Klaus’ hand falls to his chest, curls around his necklace, and he almost looks content. Almost.

Reluctantly, he stands up. He hurries to throw more wood onto the fire, trying to make it last as long as possible, and then he takes the last spare coat nearby and drapes it over Klaus like a blanket. He looks away, up at the sky overhead, and forces his breathing to be steady before he nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go h-home.”

They stand in a circle, all holding hands like last time, and Five speaks up.

“Wherever we land, we all go to the Academy and meet up again. We stay calm no matter what happens. Vanya, your powers will be fine, and you’ll be able to control them until you get to us if you’re elsewhere. It’ll be fine. We make sure Klaus is there and tell him that time travel has messed with his memories, and he will be fine.” Five pauses, looking around. “Ben, if you’re still here, try and hold onto one of us.”

They wait for several more moments, giving Ben time, and as the world begins to ripple around them all Diego turns to look at Klaus; eyes closed, body relaxed, pale and tired-looking.

And then everything is blue.

###

His body is on fire.

It is, unfortunately, not an unfamiliar sensation. Every time he’d be forced into rehab or every time he ran out of money and drugs for a while, his body would slowly begin to light itself on fire, cell by cell, eating him from the inside out.

It is to say that the feeling preoccupies his mind and so he does not notice when the argument in front of him stops, and stops very abruptly at that.

Luther and Diego, who had been arguing about something – he thinks he heard something about the moon – and Five, who had just began to interrupt the both of them, all fall silent, and everyone but Five (including Ben, sat beside him) rocks slightly, not in a dissimilar fashion to the times Klaus has been utterly fucked and had a brief moment of sobriety, becoming aware of just how fucked he is and how the world spins. Typically, though, that feeling would quickly be followed with another spike of his high and he would be lost to it again.

He can tell that his withdrawals are peaking, enough so that he’s struggling to keep what little food he’s had down and struggling not to double over at the pain in his muscles, and he really, truly, does not want to imagine what they will be like in an hour.

But then –

“Klaus?” Says Diego, and he looks up to see his brother, wide-eyed, staring right at him as if he is the one able to see ghosts. Allison, Luther and Five are looking around, and Five’s lips almost curl into a smile, though Klaus notices how he stumbles when he goes to sit down on a nearby barstool.

“Uh, yeah?” Klaus hums, using the arm of the chair to heave himself to his feet. “This has been a lovely chat, but I – I’m feeling a little under the weather, so…”

He takes a few steps towards the door, intent on just collapsing at the foot of the toilet in preparation to throw up, but then Diego is suddenly throwing himself at him; wrapping his arms around him in a tight, crushing hug. The air falls from his lungs and his stomach lurches but he finds himself moving anyway to return the embrace.

“A-are you alright, Klaus?” Diego asks, and Klaus ignores the heavy concern in his tone and the sudden stutter.

“Oh, just perfect,” he groans, voice strained. “But if you move me like that again, dear brother, I’m going to throw up everywhere.”

Diego pauses at that, breaking the hug and staring at him with an eyebrow raised. He pats Diego on the shoulder, hobbling past.

“I’ll be in the bathroom if you want to hold my hair back,” he says, and then he exits as quickly as he can on stiff, shaky legs.

###

He does not quite understand why his Diego is so worried for him – though the sentiment is nice when it feels like his guts are being mauled inside his body – but he finds himself quite alright with it. They said they’d wait for him, too, when he excused himself to the bathroom.

A family meeting, they said. Urgent, they said, Vanya is on her way and everything.

The toilet seemed more urgent, though. He managed to make it in time to cough up bitter bile, and he takes a moment to lean heavily on the sink. He turns the taps on, ducks his head and uses his shaking hands to splash cold water onto his face.

Just get through the meeting and the odd stares of concern, and then he can get one of them to chain him up in the attic, or something.

One more splash of water on his face and he lifts his head to the mirror, coming eye-to-eye with his reflection.

Something inexplicable twists in his gut; his stomach drops, his heart skips a beat. He stares back at himself, but gaunt and pale, with cloudy eyes and bruises and scratches along his face. His mouth falls open and so does his reflection’s, and his lips crack and bleed, and when his reflection blinks a tear runs down his cheek.

He stumbles back, scrubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes and blinking furiously. When he looks up, he sees himself, dishevelled and clammy-looking, typical of his withdrawals.

If he’s already imagining stuff this early into his withdrawals, he thinks, he better get through the family meeting quickly.

He slams the bathroom door shut on his way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts!!  
> I did leave the end open for the potential of a follow-up, so I'd love to hear what you think about that!


End file.
